New numbers compiled from The Week (with the help of a Pew study) show just how quickly Twitter is becoming an integral part of American Internet usage.  If your clientele falls somewhere into these demographics, you might want to consider making Twitter a larger part of your Internet marketing strategy—although its importance is still up in the air.

Let’s take a look at who’s tweeting, reading, and ignoring that vast majority of it all together:

8 percent of all Internet users are signed up for Twitter. Which means…

6 percent of the total U.S. adult population use Twitter (nearly 74 percent of American adults use the Internet)

2 percent of Internet users say they are “extremely active” on Twitter and use the service daily.

24 percent of Twitter users say they check their Twitter streams several times a day.

71 percent of tweets are ignored. Think about that.

50 percent of Twitter users tweet (send out a message) daily.

Between the ages of 18-29 is where most Twitter users reside. 14 percent of those in this bracket use Twitter. Only 4 percent of people older than 65 do.

10 percent of female Internet users use Twitter. Just 7 percent of males have embraced the service.

18 percent of Hispanic Internet users and 13 percent of Black Internet users can be found on Twitter. Just 5 percent of white users have signed up. Minority Internet users are twice as likely to use the service as non-minorities.

175 million users are registered on Twitter worldwide. About 370,000 new Twitter users are added each day.
So how can your small business exploit these trends? To understand the emerging marketing opportunities, let’s take a look at the way casual users utilize Twitter.

Unfortunately, while few people have primary email accounts that they rarely or never check, the opposite is true with Twitter—as shown by the fact that a full 71 percent of tweets are simply ignored. In other words, it seems like more often than not, people will sign up for Twitter and then rarely or never use it. This is because the information getting broadcasted out is not usually essential or personal.

For example, even with my own Twitter stream, I’ll read every single Twitter message sent directly to me (called a “direct message” or “DM”) and every Twitter message that mentions me (a tweet with @myname in it)—the Twitter home page allows you to track both of these. These serve the same basic, essential/personal-info functions as email. But if I get busy or start traveling, I’ll pretty quickly quit paying attention to everything else that people I follow on Twitter are saying. The quickest way to get burnt out on information overload is to try to read every single thing people (even people you respect and want to listen to) are saying on the Internet.

So take sweeping claims of Twitter’s inexorable growth with a bit of salt.

But also realize that the millions of folks who are active on Twitter tend to be highly active (with the number growing by leaps and bounds each day). And with this group, enormous marketing opportunities exist. For example:

• Active Twitter users who go to the trouble of “following” your Twitter stream are likely to read the majority of what you tweet out. You’ll have a captive audience.

• Active Twitter users are likely to respond directly to you with complaints or questions, so opportunities to engage directly with costumers abound.

• Active Twitter users will often use the service for for breaking news, rumors, and… deals. You can build a captive audience by regularly announcing discounts and deals on Twitter first, creating an incentive for customers to pay attention to what you’re saying.

Contact our Dallas social media marketing experts for more information (or, of course, follow us on Twitter).