12 Amazing Twitter Stats Visualized

For many mar­keters, Twit­ter is iden­ti­fi­able as one of the most impor­tant social media plat­forms on which brands can build con­nec­tions with con­sumers. With the num­ber of brand fol­low­ers grow­ing 43 per­cent in 2013, the plat­form has proved itself as a viable chan­nel...

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

For many mar­keters, Twit­ter is iden­ti­fi­able as one of the most impor­tant social media plat­forms on which brands can build con­nec­tions with con­sumers. With the num­ber of brand fol­low­ers grow­ing 43 per­cent in 2013, the plat­form has proved itself as a viable chan­nel for brands to build aware­ness, dri­ve engage­ment, and man­age feed­back and rep­u­ta­tion amongst con­sumers.


It pays to know about how con­sumers are behav­ing on Twit­ter. Now with 271 mil­lion active month­ly users, mak­ing 500 mil­lion tweets per day, and 72 per­cent of users say­ing they were more like­ly to make future pur­chas­es from brands they fol­low or engage with on Twit­ter, brands should be look­ing to lever­age avail­able data to super­charge their social media mar­ket­ing.

A new report from Exact­Tar­get has ana­lyzed data from 3.6 mil­lion Twit­ter mes­sages pub­lished via the Exact­Tar­get Mar­ket­ing Cloud plat­form in 2013. They report includes a num­ber of invalu­able charts that “depict Twit­ter engage­ment rates by day of week, month, time of day, and indus­try, com­bin­ing both paid and organ­ic tweets”.

Top 12 Twitter Takeaways

1) Twit­ter engage­ment grows steadi­ly month-on-month, peak­ing in Octo­ber and Novem­ber as shop­pers pre­pare to do their hol­i­day shop­ping.

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 16.57.28

2) Twit­ter engage­ment is con­sid­er­ably high­er dur­ing week­days, although users are less active on Mon­days as they recov­er from the post-week­end blues.

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 16.59.30

3) Twit­ter engage­ment is high­est between 3 to 6 pm (CST), when most of the U.S. (and some of Europe) is active.

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 17.01.34

4) Media and Enter­tain­ment chan­nels expe­ri­ence the high­est lev­el of engage­ment, with the busiest months between March and August (with a spike in Octo­ber).

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 17.05.20

5) Finan­cial Ser­vices see a spike in Tweet­ing activ­i­ty in Decem­ber, although this isn’t shared in the num­ber of replies or retweets.

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 17.07.29

6) Retail and E‑Commerce sees a huge spike in Tweet­ing activ­i­ty in Decem­ber, and these mes­sages are replied and retweet­ed to much more too.

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 17.08.45

7) Con­sumers are most like­ly to reply and retweet Retail and Ecom­merce mes­sages on a Thurs­day, between 3–6pm (CST).

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 17.10.53

8) The most pop­u­lar month for tweet­ing about Tech­nol­o­gy and Man­u­fac­tur­ing is Octo­ber — around three times more tweets are sent than in the January/February months.

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 17.37.06

9) Tweets about Trav­el and Hos­pi­tal­i­ty start to pick up in May, and remain high for the rest of the year, with par­tic­u­lar­ly high activ­i­ty in July and Decem­ber.

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 17.38.37

10) The great­est num­ber of tweets and retweets about Trav­el and Hos­pi­tal­i­ty take place between 12–4am (CST).

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 17.40.17

11) The opti­mum days to tweet about Tech­nol­o­gy and Man­u­fac­tur­ing are on Wednes­days and Thurs­days, and the opti­mum times are between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. (CST).

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 17.13.51

12) Pho­tos in tweets mas­sive­ly increase engage­ment rates!

Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 17.17.17

Looking Closely At The Data

An over­rid­ing take­away that mar­keters can get from this data is that con­sumer behav­ior on Twit­ter varies across indus­tries, and strate­gies should vary accord­ing­ly. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all tac­tic brands can adopt on Twit­ter, and par­tic­u­lar ver­ti­cals such as Media and Enter­tain­ment, and Trav­el may be much stronger at draw­ing replies, whilst Retail and Ecom­merce tweets may gain lots of retweets as con­sumers share the best deals.

Brands should look close­ly at avail­able data to refine and opti­mize their Twit­ter strate­gies, focus­ing on the way con­sumers are con­sum­ing and engag­ing with their mes­sag­ing on the plat­form.

You can down­load Exact­Tar­get’s full ‘Social Engage­ment Bench­mark­ing Report for Twit­ter’ here.

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

Discover why brands and agencies choose Linkdex

  • Get started fast with easy onboarding & training
  • Import and connect data from other platforms
  • Scale with your business, websites and markets
  • Up-skill teams with training & accreditation
  • Build workflows with tasks, reporting and alerts

Get a free induction and experience of Linkdex.

Just fill out this form, and one of our team members will get in touch to arrange your own, personalised demo.