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Twitter & Customer Service Survey

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Scroll down the page for survey download links

Summary

It’s now well publicised that the rapid growth Twitter experienced during 2008 and the first months of 2009 slowed dramatically towards the end of 2009, although ending the year with 75 million user accounts. Twitter activity, on the other hand, grew from 5,000 tweets per day in 2007 to 300,000 by 2008 and 2.5 million tweets per day in 2009. Figures released by Twitter in February 2010 registered 50 million tweets per day (or an average of 600 tweets per second). No such figures are available for the Middle East & North Africa, but activity on Twitter has visibly increased over the past year and overall user numbers have also grown. Spot On estimates that there are currently 35,000-40,000 registered Twitter users in the region compared with a mere 3,000 users in March 2009.

Corporate activity in the MENA Twittersphere has grown too, with an estimated 400 brands represented on Twitter in the region including companies, government departments, NGOs and non-profit organizations (more than 300 can be tracked via Spot On’s Middle East Brands Twitter List). Spot On Public Relations conducted the first major MENA Twitter habits and demographics survey in August 2009. In light of the growing commercial interest in Twitter and social media in the MENA region, Spot On carried out a customer service and Twitter survey in February 2010. About 1,000 active Twitter users across the region were invited to take part in the survey and 174 users completed the survey in its entirety.

Key Findings

— 95% of respondents welcomed brand engagement via Twitter

— 87% of those surveyed said that Twitter had affected their perception of a brand or company (up from 61% in our August 2009 survey)

— 50% of those surveyed had received customer service via Twitter

— 50% of the survey had purchased a product or service as a result of Twitter

— 65% of respondents were interested in receiving special offers & coupons from brands on Twitter

— 82% admitted a preference for brands that they knew via Twitter that affected their purchasing

— 88% of those surveyed said that they would recommend a brand based on their experience on Twitter

All respondents were also asked to give one piece of advice to brands using Twitter. 101 Twitter users out of 174 contributed advice from their experience on Twitter. We highly recommend any brand that is using Twitter or considering using Twitter to read their advice in the survey report.

You can follow Spot On PR on Twitter via @spotonpr

Survey Downloads

The report: 101 things brands should know about Twitter (PDF)

Twitter and customer service survey press release (English, Word doc)

Twitter and customer service survey press release (Arabic, Word doc)

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101 things brands should know about Twitter by Spot On Public Relations is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Want to read more?

If you liked reading this post about Twitter, you might also like:

Tweets like grains of wheat

5 reasons Spot On PR uses Twitter

The uninvited guest at the party

Spot On PR’s MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey (2009)

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Tags:Algeria, Arab World, Arabic, Bahrain, demographics, Dubai, Egypt, Facebook, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, MENA, Middle east, Morocco, North Africa, Oman, Qatar, research, Saudi, Saudi Arabia, social media, Spot On, spotonpr, Syria, Tunisia, tweet, Twitter, UAE, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
Posted in CRM, Customer care, Customers, General, Internet, Middle East marketing, Middle east, Online marketing, Twitter, brand marketing, social media | 1 Comment »

The Year Of Mobile?

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

I’ve been listening to technology pundits predict each new year to be the year of mobile for many years now. Some have written so many annual opinion pieces heralding “The Year Of Mobile” that it almost defies belief that they can still write about it with the same conviction. I might be forgiven for filtering this year’s predictions with a little skepticism, but also for pointing out that actually we have been moving ahead, year after year, with the adoption of mobile platforms and the increasing capability of those platforms and the networks that serve them. So, is it “The Year Of Mobile”? Or not?

Jared Reitzin, CEO, mobileStorm Inc., blogging on Mobile Marketing Watch, believes that it is now safe to say 2010 is the official year.

Blogger, ex-Forrester Research analyst and managing director of Dachis Group Peter Kim too blogs “2010: The Year of Mobile”.

Joe Marchese, president of socialvibe, says in his Mediapost.com “2010, The Year Of Mobile — Finally” saying in his piece that “2010 will be the year mobile marketing begins to realise the promise marketers have imagined for so long”.

Even The Times seems to concur that 2010 is “The Year Of The Mobile’ and quotes from December’s Morgan Stanley mobile Internet report, which says that “the mobile Internet is ramping faster than the desktop Internet did, and we believe more users may connect to the Internet via mobile devices rather than desktop PCs within 5 years”.

Peter Kim credits better mobile phone functionality, growing choice of applications and increasing access via 3G and Wi-Fi hotspots with helping to boost the value that consumers get out of their mobile platforms (and new opportunities for marketers). We happen to agree over here at Spot On. We’ve seen social media adoption ramp up in direct relation to the availability of broadband Internet and a decrease in cost of broadband services. And so it stands to reason that an upswing in mobile broadband and Wi-Fi access has got to be good for mobile Internet adoption and mobile marketing.

It’s no secret that the arrival of Apple’s iPhone two and half years ago really stirred up the smart phone market and, among other things, showed device manufacturers, developers and carriers how to make networked mobile applications appealing. Today, Apple, Google, Nokia, RIM and others are all focused on helping to create easier-to-use, more content rich mobile services platforms that have mass consumer appeal. Innovations like Google’s voice search for mobile, new applications based on location based services and m-commerce consumers services using barcodes all point to mobile phones playing an increasing pivotal role in our day-to-day lives.

There’s arguably no “Year Of Mobile”, but an ongoing trend that is changing the communication game. However, if 2010 is the year when we will come to recognise the need to bring that platform into our thinking as marketers, then perhaps it could be, at last, the year! As Peter Kim says, mobile is fast becoming another check box for integrated marketing. As with social media platforms, mobile is going be become increasingly important to marketing and the only decision that marketer’s need to make is when the time is right to go mobile. We’ve already decided and so you may already be reading this blog post on our mobile site http://m.spotonpr.com

Some interesting links

2010: The Year of Mobile (Being Peter Kim)

2010, The Year Of Mobile — Finally (Mediapost)

2010 IS The Year of Mobile (Mobile Marketing Watch)

2010: the year of the mobile (The Times)

The Mobile Internet Report (Morgan Stanely)

Video: Mobile Apps Roundtable at Le Web (Ustream)

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Tags:apps, broadband, Internet, marketing, Mobile, predictions, Spot On, spotonpr, VAS
Posted in 3G, Applications, General, Internet, Marketing, Mobile, Online marketing, VAS, public relations, social media | No Comments »

Alexander nominated for Communicator of the Year!

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Spot On's Group Account Director Alexander McNabb

Spot On PR's Group Account Director Alexander McNabb

The MEPRA Awards shortlisted nominations and submissions are out today, which include 10 best practice categories and two individual awards categories, being Young Professional of the Year and Communicator of the Year. Having decided as an agency not to enter into the MEPRA Awards best practice categories this year, we had no expectation of seeing ourselves entered for any award. So, imagine our surprise on reading the official MEPRA Awards 2009 press release today when we saw Spot On’s own Alexander McNabb nominated for the Communicator of the Year Award! McNabb himself very nearly choked on his morning coffee as the news broke in the office!

MEPRA’s Communicator of the Year Award was created to recognise a communicator in the Middle East region that has demonstrated outstanding communication success in reaching stakeholder audiences in 2008-2009. Honest, open communications is something of a mantra for us and Alexander has certainly championed the need for organisations to communicate openly and honestly with their publics during the past year via a variety of media including print, radio, television, conference platforms and social media. Alexander is one of five nominees for the award and the winner will be announced at the MEPRA Awards 2009 gala dinner on Tuesday, November 24th.

You can read more of what Alexander has to say on the Spot On blog, his own FakePlasticSouqs blog or follow him on Twitter. And, by the way, he’ll be talking about public relations and the MEPRA Awards 2009 on Dubai Eye’s Dubai Today program tomorrow (Monday) between 9am and 12 noon.

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Tags:Alexander McNabb, best practice, Dubai, MEPRA, Middle East PR, Middle East Public Relations, PR, public relations, spotonpr, UAE
Posted in Awards, MEPRA, Middle East Public Relations, Twitter, public relations, social media | No Comments »

Spot On PR’s MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Scroll down the page for survey download links

Summary

2009 has been a big year for Twitter with the micro-blogging platform’s rate of growth rocketing up to more than 20% per month and now showing annual growth of 1,460 percent (June 2008 to June 2009) according to Comscore. Although it’s still early days for Twitter in the Middle East and North Africa, Twitter is now growing fast and the numbers of Twitter users in the Middle East and North Africa is now increasing at a rate of 17% per month. The MENA Twitter community overall has increased ten times over the first seven months of 2009.

Spot On Public Relations has been active on Twitter since August 2008, has been tracking Twitter usage in the MENA region and, in the absence of any data on the region’s Twitter growth or demographics, has been conducting its own research. This report is the result of the region’s first extensive Twitter usage survey which focuses on the demographics, Twitter habits and experiences of a sample of 216 registered Twitter users across the Middle East and North Africa.

Here are some of the MENA Twitter Survey’s key findings:

— 54% of respondents are following 100 – 499 other Twitter users

— 53% of users surveyed have 100 – 499 followers

— 35% of Twitter users tweet 2-5 times per day

— 64% typically tweet every day of the week

— Contrary to global trends, twice as many men in our Middle East and North Africa survey use Twitter than women (other surveys show a similar male bias on Facebook in MENA)

— 99% of those surveyed tweet in English, 26% tweet in Arabic

— Only 50% of Arabic speakers tweet in Arabic

— 39% tweet mainly with other Twitter users in the Middle East

— 61% of MENA Twitter users surveyed say that Twitter has affected their perceptions of a brand

— 70% of MENA Twitter users say they have formed a more positive perception of a brand due to Twitter and 52% say that they have formed a more negative perception of a brand due to Twitter

— 48% of users surveyed say that they have often been alerted to a major story via Twitter, 54% say that Twitter has lead them to a blog or website and 21% say that they have tuned into a TV program as a result of Twitter

— 32% of users say that they have bought a product or service as a result of recommendations on Twitter

— 96% of users expect to continue to use Twitter as much as they do today or even more in the future