The Research Is In: How We Use Twitter
There has been an explosion of research on the behavior of Twitter users, what and why they tweet, what gets retweeted, and the influencers in the ecosystem. How we interact on social media has a huge impact on our influence and social media capital. Twitter is a network of users who are connected to one another via relationships formed when one user “follows” another user, exposing themselves to the messages tweeted by the people they follow. Follower count is important on Twitter and what content you tweet has a significant impact on your audience growth.
To build your social capital, keep this in mind:
1. Expressing negative sentiment has an adverse effect on follower gain.
2. Tweeting informational content attracts followers thirty times more than the tweeting ‘meformer’ content (those who share content about themselves all the time), which deters growth.
3. Know the language – Pinterest language is use, look, want, need. Twitter language is immediate actions – now, read, today, tonight, time, watching, see, going, etc.
Who are the major influencers on Twitter and how do they use Twitter?
· Celebrities pay attention to other celebrities and they rarely retweet others information.
· The media follow the media and distribute information.
· Bloggers are the major contributors to the twitter ecosystem. They are the influencers of retweeting and distributors of content.
Here is Twitter’s 10 most-popular people for 2013:
1. Justin Bieber (@justinbieber, 40,302,602 followers)
2. Lady Gaga (@ladygaga, 38,165,922)
3. Katy Perry (@katyperry, 37,725,768)
4. Barack Obama (@barackobama, 32,612,136)
5. Rihanna (@rihanna, 29,969,148)
6. Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13, 29,051,281)
7. Britney Spears (@britneyspears, 27,959,045)
8. Justin Timberlake (@jtimberlake, 21,375,807)
9. Shakira (@shakira, 20,877,068)
10. Ellen Degeneres (@TheEllenShow, 19,875,689)
This list isn’t much different from the 2012 social media’s most popular people. This infograph below include people, products, companies, and cities of influence from 2012.
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