The average number of followers for the top 100 brands is 870,000, however 58% of the top brands have over 100,000 followers.

Frequency of tweets

  • 78% of top brands post less than four tweets per day.
  • 56% of the Forbes 100 Best Small Companies don’t tweet at all and only 6% of them send between six and 10 tweets.
  • Only 28 of the brands listed in the Forbes 100 Best Small Companies in America average one or more tweets per day.

Engagement

  • Top brands average 43,100 engagements per month.
  • Audience size significantly affects engagement. Brands with between 750,000-999,000 followers average 160,000 monthly engagements.
  • Brands with 500,000-749,000 followers achieve an average of 94 engagements per tweet, with that figure rising significantly to 289 engagements per tweet for brands with 750,000-999,000 followers.

  • Replies form the bulk of brands’ post engagement tweets, with 61% of tweets being sent in response to followers.  This is nearly double that of actual brand tweets sent, which stands at 31%.

Content

  • 36% of all brand tweets contain a link.
  • Top brands achieved an average of 210 engagements per tweet when they included a picture, 125 engagements per tweet with a tumblr link and 94 engagements with a Pinterest link.

  • Companies in the Interbrand 100 which added a link to a tweet saw that link replied to or retweeted an average of 20,000-25,000 times.
  • The top 10 brands account for 60% of all engagement.

So how can your company or brand increase your engagement?

According to this study from Brandwatch 25% of top brands still use Twitter for broadcasting rather than engagement. The key is to mix it up. The brands that succeed are the ones that engage directly with their followers in a personalised manner.

Simply broadcasting your corporate spiel and latest press release doesn’t translate into high levels of engagement, but it is still a marketing channel, just one that needs to be used judicially or you risk being ignored.

As the research above shows, tweeting links to great content is the key to success. The better the content, the more engagement increases and the more likely you’ll accrue followers. If it’s your own content, then you’re on for a double-win.

Be interesting, be entertaining, be timely. Oreo has a great social media strategy and is the king of agile marketing, posting brilliant images or Vines (the short-form video platform owned by Twitter) almost immediately after a news story breaks. Read more about how Oreo owns social media here.

There’s lots more information on improving Twitter reach in this article how small businesses can make the most of Twitter.