Brands using Twitter

Twitter has released a few stats recently that make interesting reading if you are a brand. First, is the international breakdown of the WEB traffic (does not include SMS or other clients). The US has 40% of that traffic, with the next countries being Japan (24%), Spain (~6%), UK (~6%), Brazil and Canada (both ~4%), France and Germany (~3.5%), and finally Italy, Netherlands and Taiwan, all about 3%.

Even more interesting (in brand newsletter) is that people with about 10 followers, following about 10 people make up about 50% of the Twitter users and those following 80/having 70 followers and more are in the top 10%. To me, this means that most people use it in small groups of friends, as free broadcast SMS, to co-ordinate people they know in real life. As a brand there is no way you are going to break into that circle of trust unless you bring something really meaningful to that group – it may be event related, or tool related, or news, but is likely to be something they all like. With the mix of countries and the small nice groups, as a brand, choosing to use Twitter should only be done if you have something to say and as part of a much larger communications mix. Don’t expect a lot of followers though