Twitter Is Like Nicotine To Only Some (Interesting Twitter Stats)

Over the last few months I have been occasionally jotting down hash marks in my notebook. It has nothing to do with the abnormally wet weather in New England. I was sort of running a very impromptu survey of my friends, family, associates & respected peers on their Twitter habits. It all started with my Mom who flatly refused to use it when I innocently suggested it to help her online presence. It ended today after chatting with an old coworker about their inability to “get sales with Twitter”.  Wrong way to look at it, but I digress.  Here are the results broken down into 4 buckets:

1. 53% are not on Twitter and have no plans to do so- Quantcast recently estimated that Twitter has over 20 million users, while Compete.com claims there is 2.4 million with 4 million being made up of unused and SPAM accounts. By comparison the world population is approaching 7 billion which means only 2.6% of the world population using Twitter. So by comparison, having only 53% of my constituents not on Twitter is quite low compared to the world view. I would be remiss if I did not point out that a large portion of this group has been unemployed for an extended period of time and has not utilized LinkedIn effectively. There is too much of a correlation for it to be pure circumstance.
2. 21% are on Twitter and Tweet daily with at least 10 or more Tweets- This percentage I suspect is quite high considering the crowd I roll with. As the Influential Marketing Blog most eloquently put it; “Twitter is being led by the social media geeks. This particular finding should likely come as no surprise, but 15% of Twitter users who follow more than 2000 people identify themselves as social media marketers. These individuals are more likely to post update’s every day (sometimes more than once per day) and also use Twitter more actively for direct communication”. I fall into that category, so 21% is high compared to the world norm. I would also like to point out that this is the group that is gleefully employed and a high percentage of them found a job using Twitter. Just and observation…
3. 14% have a Twitter account, passively post (less than 10 posts a day) and can’t quiet “figure it out” – Most of these users are on Twitter for work or for a reason. They know they need to use it in their career, but haven’t engaged effectively. Others are also using it to find a job but instead of engaging people to let the serendipitous business opportunities present themselves, they are beating their chest about their past career instead of talking about what they are learning today!
4. 12% are either not on Twitter yet but plan too, or are on Twitter and have no posted yet. OR are on there and have less than 5 posts – I suspect this is the group that Compete.com chose to track while Quantcast qualified them as faulty users. One observation about this group- many of them currently work in a very strict or older work culture (i.e. Pharmaceutical & HealthCare, Insurance, Legal, and Investment & Banking). I give them props for considering the possibilities with Twitter / Social Media and understand why they are slow to adopt.

Results of the poll suggest Twitter is not as addictive as nicotine! But to 21% of my constituents it is a part of their life. As much of an addiction and part of their everyday life as smoking is to smokers! I think it is a matter of education and being introduced to success utilizing Twitter.  Same with Social Media in the business world, once they see the ROI it will become standard practice. For now, Twitter doesn’t seem to be addictive, but let’s revisit this in a year and see how it is trending…

@derekshowerman

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