How The State Of Twitter Can Help You Attract More Attention

Hubspot have just published a report on the state of Twitter as of June 2009. It has a range of interesting stats collected from the 4.5 million Twitter profiles on Twitter Grader.

Did you know what Twitter is attracting 5,000 - 10,000 new accounts every day, the average user tweets 0.97 times per day and 33.44% of all tweets begins with the @ symbol.

Mmm, very interesting, but what does this mean for most Twitter users?

At first glance, not much, but when you dig a little deeper, it’s possible to identify a few things that will make your use of Twitter more productive.

Let’s begin with the basic items;

a) If you have a homepage url, include it in your profile (80% of users don’t do this). If you have a website, why make it difficult for people to find it.

b) Write a short bio to let people know who you are and what interests you. It’s only 160 characters, but more than 75% of users haven’t done this.

c) Include your location in your profile (nearly 70% of users haven’t specified a location). Many Twitter users are looking to connect with other people in their part of the world, so adding your location is another filter that will help to make your community of followers more relevant.

d) Follow relevant people who have similar interests. This piece of advice might sound insultingly obvious, but more than 54% of all Twitter users haven’t followed one person. How do they expect other people to find them?

e) Tweet. Again, this may sound too obvious, but more than 54% of users have never send a tweet. If you never post any messages, how do you expect people to interact and respond to your messages?

If you follow these five simple steps, it will allow you to build a better micro community than 80% of Twitter users.

Now let’s move on to the more advanced techniques…

One of the main Twitter trends is the rapid reduction in the amount of attention that each user can give to any one tweet. As more and more people follow more and more people on Twitter, the number of tweets that are flushed through the average users timeline, means that only a small fraction of your followers will see any one of your tweets.

This is where the report does provide some clues on how to make your Tweets stand out in order to gain attention.

Option 1: Make Your Tweets Shorter

As you can see from the graph, a large number of tweets stretch beyond 133 characters as users try to pack as much into each message as possible.

However, at the other extreme, very few tweets are shorter than 30 characters. If you can be extremely creative with your choice of letters, your tweets are more likely to attract attention because;

a) They’re much shorter than the average length of message (the human mind notices differences more readily than similarities), and

b) The eye can read your entire message in one glance (people are basically lazy and have so much information competing for their limited attention)

Option 2: Provide A More Specific Location

The Hubspot report also contains a list of the top 20 locations mentioned in the Twitter profiles studied. When compared to the same list in the previous Hubspot Twitter report, an interesting trend emerges.

Twitter users are becoming more specific in the location that they display in their profile. Instead of using a country or a state, they mention a city or a town.

This may be due to the rising popularity of tweetups where Twitter users meet other people in their locality. However, it also indicates that people are increasingly interested in getting to know people who live in their part of the world.

This emphasis on building local Twitter communities means that you will build a more relevant, focused group of followers if you specify your location more accurately. So instead or USA or Texas, try Austin or Houston.

Option 3: Timing Is Crucial

Below are the approximate number of twwets posted on the Twitter network every day of the week.

Mon 650,000
Tue 790,000
Wed770,000
Thu 850,000
Fri 810,000
Sat 570,000
Sun 675,000

The Weekend is less popular, while the number of tweets builds to a peak on Thursday.

This graph shows you the average number of tweets posted per hour over a 24 hour period. As you can see, the network has a number of peaks and troughs during the day, with three increasingly large peaks at approximately 9am, 4pm and 10pm during the US business day.

So in order to achieve maximum exposure for your tweets, focus on Tuesday to Friday and time your tweets so that they arrive on the network just before the three spikes in use (in other words, 8am, 2pm and 9pm). As more people access their Twitter accounts shortly after these times, there is a greater chance that your followers will see your recent tweets.

Click Here To Collect A Full Copy Of The Hubspot Report

What do you think about the figures presented in the Hubspot report? In what direction do you think Twitter will develop? Join the discussion by adding your comments below.

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