Hooray – Twitter is finally becoming useful for you!

Yes I know a few of you are sighing heavily and muttering evil epithets under your breath, but whether you like it or not, Twitter is becoming more important for your business.

If you’re going to be involved in this whole digital marketingthing – you’d better start getting on board.

Fastest growing social network

Twitter made a lot of changes last year and the results have been pretty impressive – it’s growing faster than any other network, more than twice as fast as LinkedIn, Pinterest and Tumblr.

21% of the global internet population now use Twitter on a monthly basis!

No one cares about your lunch

The big takeaway for business owners is the rise of what is called “Active Passive” users; these are people (around 51% of all users) who don’t actually tweet but use the service as a discovery tool.

The two fastest growing activities on Twitter are “Watching full-length TV or films” and “Buying a product or service.” People are not actually doing this on Twitter – they’re finding the link to that activity on Twitter.

It’s almost as if Twitter is the Internet’s digital signpost - pointing everybody to information and services held on other networks.

What’s going on?

Smart phone penetration is exploding and Twitter is perhaps the perfect mobile app – short, sharp and to the point. The older generation are finally getting on board – the over 55’s are the fastest growing demographic with the active user base growing 116% in the last 6 months; the 45s to 54s are also accelerating at a healthy 81%.

These users have a lot more dough than your average 25 year old!

So, what should you do?

Every business is different and every owner has their unique strengths – just “getting on” Twitter probably isn't going to make that much of a difference. Twitter should be part of an integrated digital marketing strategy – you do have one of those don’t you?

None of this is rocket science – sure there are things you’ll need to learn and tools to become familiar with, but mostly it’s about understanding the big picture and working out how you can use your limited time and resources to get the best bang for your buck.

If you’d like to get rolling, reply to this email and book a session.