Are you unsure about setting up an account on Twitter? Maybe you feel like it’s not right for your brand or your line of work, maybe you think that anything you would have to say would fall on deaf ears because your target audience don’t use twitter. Maybe you’re wrong…Twitter_128

The following statistics will prove that Twitter is fast and furiously becoming the social media platform used by everyone. The stats should show that it doesn’t matter if you are female, male, have kids …if you are wealthy, broke, employed or looking for work – you still have an audience on Twitter. Take a look and see for yourself – the stats also show that even if you haven’t got a presence on Twitter, people could still be talking about you….so maybe you should be listening?

Over the last 5 years -

•     There are 200,000,000 registered Twitter users 
•     Almost 88% of people have awareness of Twitter and its existence
•     There are 450,000 new Twitter accounts created everyday
•     Meaning there are 5.2 accounts created every second of everyday

So we can longer claim that’s it unknown – there is a huge audience out there, right at your fingertips. That is a lot of people in a short space of time that have been convinced by its power.

•     There are one billion tweets posted every week
•     180,000,000 everyday
•     138,888 every minute
•     Over 1,650 every second

    Just 5% of Twitter users create 75% of the content tweeted 
    There are 1.6 billion search queries everyday
    Meaning that there are 18,000 search queries every second

Still worried that you’re too old to be using it or that your brand or company is the wrong sort to be using twitter? Take a look at the numbers then…

•     46% of Twitter users are female
•     54% are male – very equal demographics
•     53% don’t have children
•     47% do have children – time doesn’t seem to be an issue
•     The majorty of twitter users are aged between 30 and 49  - perfect age group
•     43% of people follow a brand on Twitter for special deals/offers
•     75% of users are more likely to purchase from a brand they follow – good headstart
•     67% of users are likely to recommend a brand they follow to other users

Ok….but maybe you’re still worried about the freedom of speech that users have. The fact that anyone can write anything about you, your brand, your services or your skills…

•     1,000,000 people view tweets about customer service each week
•     80% of those tweets are negative and critical
•     As much as 75% of traffic comes from sources outside Twitter

We’ll let you in on a secret – whether you have a twitter account or not people can write whatever they want, whenever they want – they will get heard and it will get commented on and it will get passed on. Surely it’s better to be listening in on those criticisms, dealing with them and changing things for the better. Let people know you’re listening.

Maybe you don’t have a brand or a company or even a job – we’ve got a stat that should get you tweeting nonetheless

•     Up to 85% of companies are using social media as part of their recruitment

Or maybe you don’t have the time to be on twitter in the middle of the day and therefore think you would miss out on most activity anyway….

•     5pm is the best time to be retweeted

So no excuses then? Looks like Twitter has an answer for everything….

By Michelle Carvill SocialMediaToday: link to original story.....