Twitter trends in Europe
Jinfo Blog

3rd September 2009

By Nancy Davis Kho

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Today Berlin PR agency Zucker.Kommunikation (http://www.zucker-kommunikation.de ) and Blatterwald (http://www.blaetterwald.org), specialists for media-resonance analysis, released the results of their survey of content communicated via Twitter by 53 German companies including Volkswagen, BMW, Deutsche Telekom and Lufthansa. According to the press release (http://digbig.com/5bagcb), 'Over a period of one week, the way that companies work with the micro-blogging service Twitter was analysed: Half of the tweets arose through dialogue (51%), about one third were news (32%), and 17% of tweets were advertising. However, the proportion of advertising employed by companies listed on the DAX, Germany's stock exchange, was twice as high.' Companies surveyed posted an average of 13 times per week. It's great news that German companies are figuring out how to use Twitter to their advantage, but the report shows room for tactical improvement. 80% of the companies surveyed sent anonymous tweets (i.e. the biography contains no information), and subject focus is lacking. Zucker.Kommunikation spokesman Matthias Bonjner notes, 'There is no clear guideline on just who is responsible for Twitter at the majority of companies.' The full report is available at http://digbig.com/5bagcc (in German only.) Twitter seems to be gathering steam across the UK and Europe; Hitwise (http://www.hitwise.com/) reported earlier this week that for the first time Twitter received more visits from the UK than did MySpace.com for the week ending 29/08/09, becoming the 27th most visited website in the UK (http://digbig.com/5bagcd). And that's probably an understatement, because it captures traffic only to www.twitter.com and not visits from 3rd party apps like TweetDeck or Twitterific. The message? Twitter is moving into mainstream territory in the UK and Europe, just as it has in the US, and companies who use it strategically stand to gain a valuable new and cost-effective communications channel. Time to set up guidelines for corporate use and start experimenting, if you're not already.

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