Twitter used to be a pretty obscure social media site here in Australia. Then, last April, a media tsunami hit our shores. First, CNN and Ashton Kutcher competed to be the first Tweeter with more than a million followers. Then Oprah featured Twitter on her show. Where Oprah goes, so goes the world. About a million new users signed up to keep up with their beloved O., according to credible blog reports. The publicity machine went into overdrive, and Twitter made the jump to global mass medium.
Since then, Australian businesses have started taking Twitter seriously, and Twitter is happy to accommodate them. Just last week, the social media service released a guide for doing business on Twitter that nicely describes its commercial usefulness: “As a business, you can use Twitter as a way to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company.”
Okay, so who exactly are these Tweeting people?
If your business is considering a commitment to Twitter, you’d want to know: “who exactly am I likely to reach?” But since Twitter doesn’t sell advertising, it hasn’t published much demographic information. So what do we know about Twitter users? How many Australians are really using it? Here’s a run-down.
Plenty of Australians love a good Tweet.
In a broad analysis of Twitter user profiles and behaviour, research firm Sysomos recently reported that 2.8% of Twitter’s audience is Australian. That’s about 650,000 users, based on Twitter’s global unique visitor stats. By contrast, Facebook has about 6 million Australian users, according to recent press reports.
Some Tweeters can’t get enough. Others are just there for a squiz.
The Sysomos study revealed some other interesting Twitter stats: 5% of users account for 75% of all Twitter activity, and 10% account for 86%. While it’s typical for a minority of users to create the majority of content on a social media site, active users dominate Twitter. This research concurs with a Nielsen report from earlier this year that revealed "more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month." It seems that millions of Twitter users are still just testing the waters, even if millions of others are diving in deep.
Twitter is more for grown-ups than kids
There’s been a huge amount of press coverage related to a Morgan Stanley report on how teenagers consume media. Morgan Stanley freely admitted the research wasn’t very scientific (a 15-year-old intern gathered insights by texting his mates), but no one is really disputing the overall findings.
Here’s what the report said about Twitter: "Teenagers do not use Twitter. Most have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they realise that they are not going to update it." Facebook, on the other hand, allows one “to interact with friends on a large scale.” For this reason, it rated as teenagers’ preferred social media site.
Another recent study confirms Morgan Stanley’s informal research. In June, a report from The Participatory Marketing Network and Pace University revealed that 99% of 18-to-24-year-olds regularly update a social network profile, but only 22% use Twitter. Of course, that’s still a huge audience.
Since you’re reading this blog, the average Tweeter is probably a lot like you.
Earlier this month, a report from Anderson Analytics got behind the numbers to reveal Tweeters’ typical interests and behaviour. Anderson found Tweeters are social media’s “super user group.” Here’s how AdAge magazine described Anderson’s findings: “Tweeters skew particularly high in all news categories, restaurants, sports, politics, personal finance and religion. They also especially like pop culture, with music, movies, TV and reading, ranking higher than average. And their buying habits mirror that. They're more likely to buy books, movies, shoes and cosmetics online than the other groups…They’re entrepreneurial...more likely to be employed part-time (16% vs. 11% average)…and have an average income of US$58,000.”
There was one word of caution. Twitter users could be a “love it and leave it” bunch. Anderson found that 43% of Twitter users said they could live without the site; 29% said the same about Facebook.
For businesses still on the sidelines, the question remains: should you live without Twitter?
The answer, put simply, is no. The research suggests that Tweeters are opinion leaders, so it makes sense to consider some level of engagement on the site. Even if you’re not ready to dive into Twitter’s deep end, you can still learn a lot about your brand and industry simply by listening in. Thinking about Twitter within the context of an overall social media strategy makes the most sense. Here’s a good starting point: the DTDigital Twitter feed.