Twitter Brand Perception Survey 5 09

Twitter Brand Perception Study A survey of 208 Twitter Users on how they feel about brands on Twitter

By Peter Sorgenfrei and Warren Sukernek

6/3/2009

Do I Want to Follow Your Brand? A Survey of Brand Perception on Twitter In May, Peter Sorgenfrei and Warren Sukernek conducted a survey on Twitter regarding users’ perception of brands on Twitter. This was a follow-up to the original Twitter Brand perception survey performed in November. This time we surveyed 208 people with 6 questions regarding interacting with brands. The survey and results are below. A couple of key insights: 1) Not surprisingly, most users (97%) agree that brands should engage their

customers on Twitter. This is 8 percentage points higher than the fall survey. Clearly Twitter users want to engage with their brands. We are accustomed to communicating with companies on Twitter. 2) The majority also have a better impression of brands that use Twitter for

customer service (88%). This is 7 percentage points higher than the original survey. 3) Proper usage of Twitter however, is paramount as 90% of users would frown

upon poor or inappropriate brand use of Twitter. This is equivalent to the results found in the original survey. 4) The power of a relationship is extremely strong on Twitter. 80% of respondents

would recommend a company based on their presence on Twitter, a huge 20 percentage point increase from the prior survey and 84% of Twitter users will reward those brands they have key relationships by being more willing to purchase from them. This was a 5 percentage point increase from the original survey. 5) Influencers: More than 80% of respondents have 100+ followers and almost 35%

of respondents have posted more than 1000 Tweets since they signed up for the service. Twitter Survey by @warrenss, Twittermaven blog and @researchguy, Sorgenfrei – attribution appreciated

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Q1: “I feel brands should engage with their customers on Twitter”

97% of respondents answered favorably (agree or strongly agree) with approximately 53% answering strongly agree. Just 3% of the audience disagreed with the statement. Thus, the respondents are overwhelmingly in favor of brands joining Twitter and having conversations with customers. This should not be surprising as the majority of the respondents are strong fans of the service. These results are a significant improvement over the fall survey. Twitter users are accustomed to communicating with companies on Twitter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Answer

Spring 2009

Fall 2008

Change

Strongly Agree

52.9%

40.5%

12.4%

Agree

43.8%

49.2%

(5.4%)

Disagree

1.9%

8%

(6.1%)

Strongly Disagree

1.4%

2.3%

(0.9%)

Q2: “I have a much better impression of companies that use Twitter for customer service”

88% of the respondents either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. This is 7% higher than the fall survey. Less than 1% strongly disagreed. The impact of user’s experience with brands on Twitter to resolve customer service problems can be shown here. Users have either personally experienced or read the stories about how companies resolve customer issues on Twitter. Not only do they

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prefer to resolve customer service issues on Twitter, but they think highly of companies that use the service for this purpose. Answer

Spring 2009

Fall 2008

Change

Strongly Agree

45.2%

36.3%

8.9%

Agree

42.8%

44.6%

(1.8%)

Disagree

11.5%

17.1%

(5.6%)

Strongly Disagree

0.5%

2.1%

(1.6%)

Q3: “I am interested in receiving special offers and coupons from companies on Twitter”

71% of users agreed/strongly agreed with the statement, but the number of agree/ strongly agree actually declined 10 percentage points from the fall survey. However, some interesting dynamics are occurring here as the number of strongly agree went up significantly, zooming 31 percentage points to 46% from the prior study. Correspondingly, the number of people who agree went down by 22 percentage points to 25%. It appears that users have gotten used to offers on Twitter and a strong number of people seem to even like them. Over 8% of respondents strongly disagreed which was the highest percentage in the entire survey. However, the strongly/ disagree group decreased by 16 percentage This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

points. Thus, one can conclude that Twitter users have become accustomed to special offers and many people want to receive them. Answer

Spring 2009

Fall 2008

Change

Strongly Agree

46.2%

15.0%

31.2%

Agree

24.5%

40.0%

(15.5%)

Disagree

21.6%

29.2%

(7.6%)

Strongly Disagree

7.7%

15.8%

(8.1%)

Q4: “If a company uses Twitter poorly or inappropriately, it would affect my overall perception of their brand”

90% of the respondents were in agreement (strongly agree or agree) with this statement. This is comparable to last fall’s result of 88%. However, there appears to be a mix change as the number that strongly agree declined by 4 percentage This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

points and those who agree increased by 6 percentage points. Once again, strongly disagree had the lowest score in the entire survey for this question as well, 0.5%. The Twitter community wants to engage in conversation with their brands, but it will not tolerate poor practices from those companies. Although poor or inappropriate use was not defined in the survey, that is assumed to include broadcasting messages, lack of responses, latency in response, follower spam. Answer

Spring 2009

Fall 2008

Change

Strongly Agree

46.2%

50.4%

(4.2)%

Agree

44.2%

37.9%

6.3%

Disagree

9.1%

11.3%

(2.2%)

Strongly Disagree

0.5%

0.4%

0.1%

Q5: “I would recommend a company’s product or service based on their presence/usage of Twitter”

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80% of respondents were in favor (strongly agree or agree) with this statement. This is an increase of 20 percentage points from the prior survey. 49% strongly agreed, a huge jump from the fall of 33%! The strength of the Twitter relationship is such that it can positively impact brand perception and recommendations of that brand. That is certainly reflected in the survey results. Company Twitter usage and relationships has an impactful word of mouth effect. As seen elsewhere, offline word of mouth activities are affected by online recommendations and experiences. Answer

Spring 2009

Fall 2008

Change

Strongly Agree

49.5%

16.7%

32.8%

Agree

30.8%

43.3%

(12.5%)

Disagree

13.9%

34.6%

(20.7%)

Strongly Disagree

5.8%

5.4%

0.4%

Q6: I would be more willing to purchase a product/service from a company that has a relationship with me on Twitter”

Over 83% of respondents were in favor (strongly agree or agree) with this statement. However, the strength of respondents’ conviction is noted as 54% strongly agree. This is an increase of 32 percentage points. As described in Q5, This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

the power of the relationship on Twitter is very strong. In Q6, the relationship appears to have an even stronger impact than Q5. The audience is more willing to purchase a product than recommend it. Respondents are willing to reward company’s who engage with them on Twitter by purchasing their product or service.

Answer

Spring 2009

Fall 2008

Change

Strongly Agree

54.3%

22.5%

31.8%

Agree

29.3%

56.3%

(27.0%)

Disagree

13.9%

18.8%

(4.9%)

Strongly Disagree

2.4%

2.5%

(0.1%)

Demographic Questions This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Q7: How many followers do you have on Twitter?

This question was fairly distributed with the largest (100-499) at 34% and the smallest (less than 50) at 9.1%. However, there was significant growth (15.4 percentage points in the segment with over 1000 followers to 27.9%. These results are similar to the fall survey. Answer

Spring 2009

Fall 2008

Change

<50

9.1%

12.1%

(3.0)%

50-99

9.6%

14.2%

(4.6%)

100-499

33.7%

42.1%

(4.4%)

500-999

19.7%

19.2%

0.5%

>1000

27.9%

12.5%

15.4%

Q8: How many tweets have you posted since signing up for Twitter?

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The most popular answer was between 100-499 with 29%. This is similar to the fall results of 27%. However, the number of responses with 1000-2999 declined by 9 percentage points to 18%. This question is probably most affected by the growth of Twitter over the last six months.

Answer

Spring 2009

Fall 2008

Change

<100

14.9%

7.9%

7.0%

100 - 499

29.3%

27.1%

2.2%

500-999

20.7%

17.9%

2.8%

1000-2999

18.3%

27.1%

(8.8%)

3000 or more

16.8%

20.0%

(3.2%)

Q9: What is your age range? This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Consistent with other recent surveys, 66% of the audience is between the ages of 25 and 44. However, it is interesting that the percent of respondents over 55 declined by 15 percentage points. And none of the respondents were over 65 years old. Answer

Spring 2009

Fall 2008

Change

<18

0.0%

0.0%

0%

19-24

7.2%

6.1%

1.1%

25-34

30.3%

25.6%

4.7%

35-44

35.6%

30.1%

5.5%

45-54

23.1%

19.5%

3.6%

55-64

3.8%

15.4%

(11.6%)

65+

0.0

3.3%

(3.3%)

Q10: What is your gender?

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The number of women completing the survey has increased to 45%. In fact, the survey audience seems very similar to that reported in recent Twitter demographic surveys. Answer

Spring 2009

Fall 2008

Change

Male

54.8%

60.4%

(5.6)%

Female

45.2%

39.6%

5.6%

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