Weber Shandwick recently conducted research to evaluate how effectively Fortune 100 companies used Twitter to its full potential as an engagement platform.
I just downloaded it. The report, called “Do Fortune 100 Companies need a Twittervention?” starts with some numbers: more than 20 million people use Twitter in the U.S. and 50 million worldwide.
Ample opportunities for audiences to engage with corporations and brands, Weber Shandwick says. However, are Fortune 100 companies also using Twitter for engagement purposes?
Then comes a nice image of Twitter as the “über corporate cocktail party”.
Weber Shandwick: “the influentials, celebs and dealmakers you invite will stay only if the conversation is entertaining, valuable and interesting. So, what makes good conversation? The key is listening and engaging”.
That’s a good start so let me resume some of the key findings.
The Weber Shandwick Fortune 100 study showed that 73 percent of Fortune 100 companies registered a total of 540 Twitter accounts. That’s pretty impressive and, I have to admit, quite a surprise for me.
Fortune 100 companies need some help to get engaging on Twitter
But, as always there’s bad news too: the study also showed that 76% of those accounts did not post tweets very often and 52% were not ‘actively engaged’. To measure this, Weber Shandwick used several engagement metrics including references and retweets.
Now, although this is less impressive than the first finding, it shows that most companies at least have their Twitter handles, let’s say Twitter domain names. Let’s hope the non-active ones get active soon.
Weber Shandwick also found that 50% of Fortune 100 accounts had fewer than 500 followers. It seems that Fortune 100 companies need a “Twittervention” indeed.
That’s all I’m going to tell about the report since you can download it without registration, and since I think you should really do it because, even if it’s only 10 pages, it contains some very good stuff and very nice graphics, every marketer will love.
So, go ahead and download it here (PDF).
http://www.webershandwick.com/resources/ws/flash/Twittervention_Study.pdf
Subscribe to my email newsletter
Join me in the Social Marketing Forum