To Tweet or Not to Tweet
Is Twitter a waste of your time?
Let’s say you own a small business and you want to wallow in the free publicity that comes with social media. So, you hop on Twitter. Ever wonder what the chances are of your tweet being retweeted? Or how about getting a reply? Is the time invested worth the outcome?
Social media analyzer Sysomos examined 1.2 billion tweets in the last two months. Of those, a whopping 71% produced no reaction whatsoever.
- 23% of tweets generated a reply. However, of those replies, only 1.53% of Twitter conversations are three levels deep - after the original tweet, there is a reply, reply to the reply, and reply to the reply of the reply. So, not much conversing goin’ on.
- 6% of tweets are actually retweeted.
- 92.4% of all retweets happen within the first hour of the original tweet being published, while an additional 1.63% of retweets happen in the second hour, and 0.94% takes place in the third hour. Likewise, if a tweet will generate a response, most of the time it’s within the first hour of the original tweet being published.
So, according to Sysmos, if you tweet, most of the reaction will come within the first hour. The chances of a reply are greater than being retweeted. The chances of having an ongoing conversation based on your original tweet are slim to none.
Unless, of course, you’ve mastered the art of provocative writing in 140 characters or less.
Comments (4)
Ryan Battles
Oct. 13, 2010
These statistics are interesting Cristi. Even though I see very little response to my tweets for the most part, I do feel that somehow it helps me keep a pulse on my professional community. Kyle Cotter (@CotterWebDesign) recently tweeted, "I think it is more of connecting with people than, having in depth conversations with people."
I have found the most use from twitter coming from paring down my followers list to those who are professionally relevant to me, and try to keep my tweets mostly professional-related, with the occasional personal touch so they get to know me as a person. Most of my personal posts, such as what my kids are up to, go to Facebook, because the people following me there are my friends and family who know very little about the technologies that I work with daily.
So all that being said, I guess it doesn't matter how much what I write gets retweeted, what I'm more concerned about is if people are following or unfollowing me based off of what I post. If people don't care to hear what I post, then I am just wasting time, but if people are sticking around to keep listening, then at least we'll know a little more about each other when we end up collaborating on a project, or meeting at a conference.
fitted wardrobes
Nov. 10, 2010
Interesting statistics. But it's not actually SEO, that's social media presence, that is usually doubtful ...
lebisol
Nov. 24, 2010
If they don't reply to your tweet...how do you know they are listening? By the fact they are followers?
If there is no conversation then there is no communication and then medium is completely irrelevant.
In this case, social sites are nothing more than public and free advertising billboards...which, really, is what the creators of them now use them for anyhow.
It is nice to stay in touch with pears but having some entered into you list of contacts (or followers) is not staying in touch.
If you are passionate about something then you should have more passion to express it then just limited number of characters.
Some interesting stats, thanks for the article.
Ryan Battles
Nov. 24, 2010
I agree to an extent @lebisol. I have found that for certain posts to twitter, I receive very little if any feedback. Over time I have learned that those types of posts are not really worth the time that they take to write. However, when I do get replies, then I know what it is that makes twitter an engaging medium. All-in-all, you just have to take twitter for what it is: microblogging. The rules and best practices for blogging are pretty much the same for twitter usage, just on a shorter, more frequent scale.
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