Last week, I was lucky enough to attend the #InFlight event at Twitter HQ. The event was designed specifically for media researchers, by media researchers. Olesya Moosam and her team ran the show with one principal aim: prove and improve the value of Twitter to brands. Here’s what I learnt:
Audience Insights
The first topic of the day was exploring Twitter for audience insights. Twitter insight surveys (4/5 questions per survey as a tweet) are distributed within a user’s normal feed and appear as they would if they were following the account; however it’s called out as promoted by Twitter. Users can contribute and discover research questions using #twitterinsiders. Twitter doesn’t collect a user’s demographic data upon signup and therefore work with third party businesses to gather this data.
Insight Funnel
The second topic was Twitter insight funnel, with the aim of understanding; Who/What/Where/When/Why/How users utilise the Twitter platform. The most interesting stat from this topic was 25% of Twitter users are on the toilet when using the platform.
Passions
Every hashtag created by the user is an opportunity for brands to connect with people to talk about their passions. The most common passion discussed on Twitter, perhaps unsurprisingly, is music. Twitter has revolutionised the fan club, enabling fans to get much closer to their favourite stars. The retweet is now the new autograph.
The key strategic advice Twitter recommends for brands is to share common values with the user and their passion, which in turn enables the brand to be more human and puts the fan at the heart of any campaign.
The festive season sees an all-out war from brands fighting to gain a share of our wallets. Interestingly, 75% of UK Twitter users state they want more from brands during this period, and 45% of users want gift ideas from brands on Twitter. Also 36% of users take to Twitter to get inspired for Christmas.
Product effectiveness
When it came to product effectiveness, Twitter discussed the shifting attention from TV to apps. Stats indicate 97% of users use their connected device while watching TV. TV becomes the background noise and the smartphone or tablet holds their sole focus of attention.
59% of UK Twitter users have a strong interest in TV shows and series, with 53% of UK Twitter users regularly taking to the platform to talk about TV. So Twitter is a massive player in second screening. For example, Twitter saw a 2.2x uplift in conversations about Made in Chelsea when the cast were tweeting during the episode.
It’s well publicised that more and more consumers are adopting streaming products such as Apple TV and Google Chromecast to consume their favourite programmes on demand. By 2018, Twitter predicts 84% of all internet traffic will be for online video. Whereas mobile video consumption will grow 13x by 2019, Twitter video is growing faster, seeing 150x growth. Video on their platform outperforms norms with 18%+ favourably, 18%+ engagement and 11%+ memory than a branded post which doesn’t feature video.
When brands push live video content, this resonates 63% more than normal video. For example, goal highlights in the FA Cup final, sponsored by Mars UK, saw a 35%+ purchase intent average lift among those engaging with video.
