Breaking Through the Clutter

Monday, August 17, 2009

A new study released today, and being pushed in part by some looking to diminish the value of Twitter, finds that a majority of the site’s entries would classify as nothing more than “pointless babble.”

The study, conducted by the Texas based marketing firm Pear Analytics, sought to classify 2,000 randomly selected tweets into 6 categories.  Here is what they found:

Pointless Babble (along the lines of “I am eating a sandwich”): 40.55%
Conversational messages (back and forth messaging between users): 37.55
ReTweets: 8.7%
Self Promotion: (typically by companies): 3.75%
Spam: 3.75%
Mainstream News: 3.6%

This news doesn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who has followed the growth of the popular messaging service as Twitter’s “pointless babble” aspect has long been the butt of many new media-related jokes.

What the study does suggest, though, is that organizations looking to use Twitter as an outreach tool must work that much harder to cut through the loads of clutter to ensure they are a part of the conversation. 

Three quick tips to consider:

1) Devote the necessary resources: Twitter is more than side work for a bored intern.  To build a following and enhance your name in this space you must be willing to dedicate time and manpower to understanding the medium and your audience.

2) Stay current: News happens quickly and dedicated Twitter users are quick to broadcast and comment on the days occurrences.  Not only will you need to be up on current events, you will need to offer something new and insightful to the conversation.  Much like a college seminar class, you won’t be able to contribute much if you don’t do your homework.

3) Interact: If you present your followers with timely and thought out information it is likely you will hear back from them.  Here is where most new media experiments fail, folks seem to forget this is a two way street.  Ask questions of your followers, respond to direct messages, and be willing to retweet worthy messages. 

These couple tips, as well as your own trial and error, will help to increase the conversational tone throughout Twitter while hopefully cutting down on some of the noise.