A one-week study measuring the effectiveness of Fortune 100 Company Twitter use by Weber Shandwick revealed that a majority of companies are not using the social network to its optimal capacity. Rather than engaging customers and encouraging conversation and feedback, most of the accounts provided a one-sided display of news and information.
Here are some of the most interesting results:
- 76% did not tweet regularly
- 52% were not actively engaged in terms of links, hash tags, references, and re-tweets.
- 50%s had fewer than 500 followers
- 15% were inactive
- 11% were placeholder accounts used only to prevent brand-jacking.
Perhaps even worse, WS found 41 accounts (not included in the study's percentage) that appeared to be unauthorized.
A number of the accounts lacked personality or engagement and were created simply for online presence. Only 16% were used to increase sales through coupons and special offers.