Twitter’s Research Wars now begin..

Mashable reported a very insightful study this past week in the article “Sorry Marketers Your doing Twitter Wrong…” starting “the Twitter Research” wars (click on the link to download the study) just like the Facebook Research wars of a few weeks ago when studies found completely difference results on the viability of “the Godfather” of Social Media. Now, it’s Twitter’s turn. We always love a good debate especially ones about how we can gain better marketing results for our Brands.

“Most marketers are tweeting too much on the wrong days, not using hashtags enough and almost never do the one thing that will dramatically boost their retweets — ask for them — according to a new study looking at how marketers use Twitter from Buddy Media.” The Study additionally cites that Brands have missed the boat about tweeting on weekends when they can experience the most consumer engagement ( see the above chart from the article). Furthermore, the Study notes the best hours to tweet are the busy hours of 8am-7pm. The “Tweet spot” is 4pm. Buddy Media also recommends that Brands ask for “Retweets” and should spell out the request fully versus the abbreviated RT.

While the Study does not contain the data on the sex or age of the respondents for further analysis, our gut is that women play on Twitter as much during the week as the weekend because saturday and sunday schedules are packed every minute with family activities. Hopefully, they aren’t Tweeting too much at their child’s soccer game although we do confess to an occasional temptation.

To this theory, PR Daily announced another study two days later. “Tuesday is the best day of the week for Twitter engagement, according to a new report from Yesmail” that followed a variety of key Retail brands over the last quarter such as Banana Republic and Kenneth Cole. (click on the link to download the study by Yesmail). The Study found that the best hours for engagement are 5-6 AM and 7-8 AM. The Yesmail analysis also joined the Facebook Research wars because their findings show that Facebook engagement is growing faster than campaigns themselves validating marketing spend.

We recommend that Brand marketers review each Study because the reports are well written, insightful and even amusing. We are hopeful that a study will tackle the twitter habits of women and moms soon because they are making 85% of the household purchasing decisions (Blog Her study). Meanwhile, we look forward to more debate on the best time to Tweet, but we plan to see you on Tuesday and the weekends for sure!

2 Comments

Don on July 3, 2012 at 1:40 pm

Thanks for sharing these fascinating studies. With Twitter in particular and social media in general still close to their infancy, one can expect a lot of dynamism as their development continues. This raises questions as to whether the “busy” and “non-busy” hours will shift over time (as the population of users grows), whether marketers will have to adapt to the constraints of social media usage patterns or be able to exert some influence over those patterns, whether a rush of marketing effort devoted to the busy hours could lead to a “crowding out” effect (recalibrating the relative returns on marketing efforts), how marketers can segment the social media audience to better serve their goals, among others. Watching the rapid evolution of the social media will be fascinating. There will almost certainly be some significant marketing opportunities to be leveraged, as well as threats presented to firms that ignore or don’t understand that evolution.

Kam on July 3, 2012 at 6:32 pm

Thanks for this wonderful article and for including our study in it. You’ve made some wonderful suggestions on ways we could improve it, which we’ll definitely consider for future Yesmail reports.

I noticed that you included a link to our report, but that the link only indirectly gave people access to our report through PRdaily.com. Just to make it easier for your readers to download the report, a direct link to it is http://www.yesmail.com/landing/Market-Intelligence-Report/download.html

Don on July 3, 2012 at 1:40 pm

Thanks for sharing these fascinating studies. With Twitter in particular and social media in general still close to their infancy, one can expect a lot of dynamism as their development continues. This raises questions as to whether the “busy” and “non-busy” hours will shift over time (as the population of users grows), whether marketers will have to adapt to the constraints of social media usage patterns or be able to exert some influence over those patterns, whether a rush of marketing effort devoted to the busy hours could lead to a “crowding out” effect (recalibrating the relative returns on marketing efforts), how marketers can segment the social media audience to better serve their goals, among others. Watching the rapid evolution of the social media will be fascinating. There will almost certainly be some significant marketing opportunities to be leveraged, as well as threats presented to firms that ignore or don’t understand that evolution.
Kam on July 3, 2012 at 6:32 pm

Thanks for this wonderful article and for including our study in it. You’ve made some wonderful suggestions on ways we could improve it, which we’ll definitely consider for future Yesmail reports.

I noticed that you included a link to our report, but that the link only indirectly gave people access to our report through PRdaily.com. Just to make it easier for your readers to download the report, a direct link to it is http://www.yesmail.com/landing/Market-Intelligence-Report/download.html

Recent Posts

Recent Comments