With close to 60 million users, Twitter is a force corporate marketing departments just can't ignore. The reach offered by this microblogging platform is profound, and skipping it means yielding digital turf to the competition.
Yet, as the country's major brands have flocked to Twitter, not all have mastered it. Some merely push headlines and deals, while others have used it as a way to open a dialogue with their customers, build relationships and ultimately grow their businesses. A study by The Big Money sought to determine the dozen companies that are mastering Twitter and why they are the masters.
Methodology and the Top 12
To identify the top brands on Twitter, The Big Money used 1 million followers as the cutoff. It also considered how quickly the user bases have grown, number of tweets pushed out and the quality of the content -- e.g., whether it's better than a rehashed RSS feed. Also, the Twitter stream needed to be a genuine corporate account, rather than the CEO's account.
This approach whittled the list of players down to 32 companies, at which point metrics from Twitterholic were used to analyze the field and cut 20 users. Those left standing were:
- The New York Times (NYT)
- E! Online
- National Basketball Association
- CNN Breaking News (TWX)
- Whole Foods (WFMI)
- BNO News -- now in a relationship with MSNBC, a joint venture involving Microsoft (MSFT) and NBC Universal (GE)
- Etsy
- Health Magazine
- JetBlue (JBLU)
- Silicon Alley Insider
- Dell Outlet (DELL)
- Amazon MP3 (AMZN)
The reasons for these selections vary from creativity and effectiveness of content to the sheer volume of tweets sent out to large audiences.
The Trends Inside
Twitter plays a major role in creating the top tweeters, it seems. The company offers a list of suggested users for people to follow, with Biz Stone, Twitter cofounder, writing on the company's blog, "When you don't follow any other accounts on Twitter the product is not as relevant as it could be." There are more than 400 accounts recommended, with only one of them, CNN Breaking News, missing the million-follower mark.
Twitter wouldn't comment on whether there was any thinking behind its suggestions (though this could be yet another interesting way to monetize the microblogging service. Twitter, take a note on this). But intended or not, Twitter has gotten into the kingmaker business, as listed accounts wind up with much greater followings. The Big Money notes that @jetblue, which is recommended by Twitter, has 1.4 million followers. Meanwhile, @comcastcares, also a customer service Twitter account, for cable provider Comcast (CMCSA), has only 32,000.
The company does say that finding a better way to communicate recommendations is a priority.
Customer service is more fluid, and visible, on Twitter, which provides a better opportunity to engage followers. Helping a customer doubles as fantastic publicity. The two-way communication, which isn't as prevalent on Facebook fan pages, helps customers connect with the companies they prefer.
Finally, The Big Money found that media companies own the Twittersphere, and those in the food business, which perform well on Facebook, aren't ranking as high. Depending on how you categorize them, at least half of the top 12 corporate Twitter users are in the media business, while Whole Foods is the only one that touches the food business. It is also one of only two retailers (three if you count Dell because of its direct-to-consumer sales) on the list. In fact, the first four slots are filled by companies that could be classified as media and entertainment.
Despite the fact that the New York Times took the #1 position, old media hasn't mastered the medium. Competitors such as Gannett's (GCI) USA Today and the Washington Post (WPO) didn't even have a shot.
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