Broadcaster, Curator & Conversationalist: How businesses use Twitter

Yesterday I published a short white paper on how Swedish businesses use Twitter for their official corporate accounts. I looked at more than 350 corporate accounts and especially at the ones with most followers. These top accounts behaved in very different ways and I sorted them into three different categories, labelled Broadcasters, Curators and Conversationalists.

Broadcasters

Mainly use Twitter to publish messages, often with automated feeds from other sources, such as Facebook or press releases. Rarely engage in conversations, answer questions or retweet other users’ tweets. Low share of retweets and replies.

Curators

Actively filter and select the most interesting content on certain topics and share with their followers. Are thought leaders who mix their own expertise with retweets of other sources in the community. High share of retweets.

Conversationalists

High degree of interactivity with other users. Often use Twitter as a tool to help customers, answer questions and engage with the community. High share of replies.

Twitter graph

Depending on which of these categories a corporate account falls into, the way the company staffs its Twitter account also varies. I would imagine that it doesn’t take a lot to become a Broadcaster, just add a number of your own sources that automatically feeds into Twitter, plus the occasional manual entries and you are all set to go. To become a Curator, you would possibly need a person or a team that are some kind of thought leaders, who are interested in the company, the products and the industry. People who read a lot, who like to be in the forefront and lead the way forward. For Conversationalists you typically need a team that can be online constantly and are able to network within the organization so that they quickly can find the answers to customers’ questions.

What other skills do you think are necessary for each of these types of Twitter profiles?

Curators and Conversationalists – a study of 350 Swedish corporate Twitter accounts

Twitter is one of the most popular and fastest growing social media services. As more and more people share information in real-time on Twitter, the more important it becomes for businesses to have a presence on Twitter. According to research, it is more common among Fortune Global 100 Companies to use Twitter than Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogs. Now that more and more Swedish businesses start to tweet, it gets interesting to study how they use Twitter. For that reason, I have compiled a list of more than 350 Swedish corporate Twitter accounts and studied the most popular ones.

Summary
An analysis of 350 Swedish corporate Twitter accounts reveal the average number of:

  • followers: 1,240
  • following: 480
  • tweets: 710

First registered account: Fleecelabs (@fleecelabs) which was registered on Jan 29, 2007.

Account with most followers: H&M (@hm) – 82,100

Account that follows most other accounts: Spotify (@spotify) – 16,500

Account with highest Klout score (influence): SJ (@SJ_AB) – 65

Account with most tweets: Ving/sistaminutenARN: (@sistaminutenARN) – 24,300

Account with highest followers/following ratio: H&M (@hm): 1,400 times more followers than following back.

60 accounts have more than 1,000 followers.

The ten most popular accounts, in terms of number of followers are:

  1. H&M (@hm) – 82,100
  2. Spotify (@spotify) – 72,000
  3. Stardoll (@stardoll) – 51,100
  4. Adland (@adland) – 21,400
  5. Acne Online (@acneonline) – 14,600
  6. Ericsson Labs/Tor Bjorn Minde (@ericssonlabs) – 10,800
  7. Ericsson Press (@ericssonpress) – 6,100
  8. SJ (SJ_AB) – 5,900
  9. Sony Ericsson DW (@sonyericssondev) – 5,900
  10. Propellerhead (@propellerheadsw) – 5,700

For a full list of live data with Swedish companies on Twitter, go here: http://twitterlists.toolboxr.com/swedish-companies/ . The list currently has 391 Twitter accounts. Also see the Social Media Wiki: http://socialmedia.wikidot.com/twitter-se

Read the report: