What all marketers should know about Twitter in 2018

Twitter is often an overlooked platform by marketers. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube all take priority with the majority of marketers, and understandably so with those three having the highest number of users and therefore being where the majority of the online attention is. However, in this blog post, we’re going to show to you how and why you should probably be using Twitter more.

Who uses Twitter in 2018?

Twitter, as of 2018, has 330 million monthly active users, which is a 4% increase on 2017. It’s important to know who these 330 million people are and what they are using the social network for before shoving your product down their throats. 36% of people aged 18 to 29 use Twitter, more than any other age group, and 74% of twitter users say they use the app to get their news, more than any other social media platform (Reddit and Facebook are closest to Twitter with 68% of their users using the respected platforms for news purposes). This means that the majority of users of this mini-blogging platform are millennials and the majority of them use it to get their daily dose of news. If you are a news company and want to get more younger people reading your articles, or if you have certain blogs targeted to younger audiences, Twitter could be the perfect place to get exposure in front of the correct audience for your business without having to do specialised targeting.

Additionally, Twitter is one of the only platforms where you can send out multiple posts without annoying people! We all know how annoying people can be when they’re posting 8 selfies at once on Instagram or 15 posts on Facebook and our feed is full of the same thing. 

How can Twitter help your business?

Twitter is a very interactive platform. You can run polls to get your followers ideas on the best name for a new project or the best items for your brand’s next clothing launch. There’s nothing more valuable then when your customers feel a connection with your brand. This real interaction also makes twitter a great platform to deal with all of your customer queries and concerns. Use Twitter as your companies customer service desk.

Twitter Q2 2018 Earnings Report

In Twitter’s most recent ‘Q2 Earnings Report’, they announced an impressive 24% increase in total revenue from the second quarter of 2017 and a 23% increase in advertising revenue from the second quarter of 2017. Now lets dig deeper into the advertising revenue. In terms of geography, advertising revenue generated in the US got a laudable a 9% increase from quarter two of 2017, however international advertising saw a massive 40% increase in advertising revenue. This could be proof that Twitter is becoming a much more used social media platform worldwide and will be interesting to see how this develops over the course of 2018 and into 2019. 

“We're pleased more broadly internationally as well where we grew 40%. International is now over half of revenue, and we expect it to continue to grow faster than the U.S. even though the U.S. actually did accelerate this quarter from about 10% to 15% revenue growth.” - Ned Segal, Twitter CFO

 You can read Twitters Q2 Earnings Report here: 

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of twitter also had this to say about the report: 

“During the second quarter, we launched new tools to address behaviours that distort and detract from the public conversation and introduced new measures to handle spam, malicious automation and platform manipulation. We also acquired Smyte, a technology company that specializes in safety, spam and security issues to help us address these challenges faster. This is important work that complements what we're doing to connect people with interest and help them discover information. We've introduced new machine learning algorithms that organize the conversation around events and make it easier for people to find and follow topics, events and interests. We're also making these experiences more accessible by surfacing them on the timeline, in Explore and in search results, as you likely saw during the World Cup. These types of product improvements are contributing to healthy daily active usage growth, which is 11% year-over-year during the second quarter. The momentum on the platform is translating into success with advertisers, with total revenue increasing 24% year-over-year in the second quarter. We're receiving positive feedback from customers about our efforts to enhance advertiser transparency and improve the health of the public conversation.”

Overall, Twitter offers possibilities for businesses that no other social media platform does. It is much easier to have a real interaction with customers and is much easier to have a post go ‘viral’ and boost attention to your business. Everyone should be using Twitter, yet it is arguably one of the most overlooked digital platforms for digital marketers to use.