Twitter: Where the Influencers Are
You’ve heard this before:
Connect with people who have influence.
That’s one of the basics of online marketing. To grow your brand, sales, revenues, reach, etc., you need to reach and connect with people who have influence. But where are these people? You can scour blogs for them. You can scour YouTube for them. Or Digg, Facebook, Flickr, and forums.
That’s a lot of work. And according to a recent ExactTarget study, you may only need to look in one place: Twitter.
“Twitter users are the most influential online consumers, and their influence spreads across all areas of the Internet,” ExactTarget says. And this chart offers some compelling evidence:
ExactTarget’s research shows that, compared to the general Internet population, Twitter users are:
- 6 times more likely to publish articles at least monthly.
- 5 times more likely to post blogs at least monthly.
- 7 times more likely to post to Wikis at least monthly.
- 3 times more likely to post product reviews at least monthly.
- 3 times more likely to participate in online forums at least monthly.
- 5 times more likely to share coupons on coupon sites at least monthly.
The stats are from the fourth part of a five-part research report on social media. You can read more and download the report here.
And if you’re not sure how small businesses can use Twitter, why not learn from other small businesses? Check out these articles from my archives:
- 10 Creative Ways Businesses Used Twitter in 2009
- More Examples: Small Businesses Using Twitter
- How Not to Use Twitter
- Twitter’s Own Guide for Small Business
- Boston Restaurants (heart) Twitter
Your turn: If you know of more small businesses that are using Twitter successfully, drop a link to their Twitter account in the comments so we can all check ’em out.
Great write up. I had no idea the Twitter community was so influential.
As for small businesses with good Twitter content. I follow SunglassWarehouse.com (http://twitter.com/sunglasswarehse) and they always have engaging content that isn’t ever too salesy. I think they are doing a very good job with it.
Interesting metrics. It helps refute the “twitter is nofollowed and does nothing for seo” argument.