After examining (I would imagine painstakingly) half a million tweets, a group of researchers from Penn State found out that 20% of them contain a brand name.
These “branded” tweets generally contain either requests for product information or responses to the brand.
Starbucks and Dell, which have the highest engagement on the web, are probably two of the brands getting the spotlight from users.
“People are using tweets to express their reaction, both positive and negative, as they engage with these products and services,” said Jansen, associate professor of information science and technology in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at Penn State.
“Tweets are about as close as one can get to the customer point of purchase for products and services.”
Is this a social media invasion?
I wouldn’t consider it to be an invasion when we, the users are the one contributing to the “branded” tweets. 20% of the tweets represent real people talking about a particular brand or product. Also, with 80% of the Twitterverse using Twitter for business purposes, we are already used to the culture of this ecosystem.
We all expect businesses to be there.
On a personal level, it is up to us to decide if we want to follow these brands on Twitter. But just looking at this simple statistic, we can tell how much Twitter can do for brands if users like them. As businesses, we would want consumers speaking positively about us and responding to our messages. Even if they are speaking negative things, it is a good source to find out consumer sentiments and address any issues that may arise.
