Top 4 Brands on Twitter

If you want to learn Twitter strategy from the best, it helps to shadow those who are successful. In today’s post, we’re going to look at the top brands and accounts on Twitter based on audience size, engagement, customer service, and advertising visibility.

Most Followed: @YouTube

Surprisingly, @Twitter is not the most followed brand on Twitter. @YouTube has taken that spot according to MediaBistro with over 30 million members.

One thing that can be learned from @YouTube’s account is that the most followed doesn’t always equal the most engaging. @YouTube does a great job with capitalizing on trending topics such as ComicCon, Pacific Rim, and other entertaining trends including photos of cats on robots. Unfortunately, this only translates to an average of under 200 retweets and favorites per tweet, and even fewer replies (usually under 10).

Most Influence with Customers: @BestBuy

Many people are turning to social networks, including Twitter, for quick customer service response. One of the top brands utilizing Twitter for customer service is @BestBuy according to Business Insider.

How do they do it? They actually use different accounts such as @Twelpforce, @BestBuySupport, @GeekSquad, and local store accounts to answer any questions tweeted by customers. Customers can tweet them to answer pre-sales questions, fix customer services issues, and get support for products purchased. The results? Lots of loyal Best Buy customers who love the feeling of getting quick, personal responses on social media.

Most Engaged Audience: @Notebook

Nestivity, a popular Twitter engagement tool, teamed up with Mashable to release a study of the brands receiving the most engagements per tweets. The top brand on that list: @Notebook

This account has over 4 million followers and goes with the engagement technique of sharing quotes and (sometimes) inspirational photos. The result is an average response of between 1,000 - 2,500 retweets and over 500 favorites.

Similarly to the @YouTube account, retweets does not equal conversation. While some of the tweets have replies, many do not. And it’s hard to judge if this strategy has a positive result of website traffic and conversions as this account doesn’t seem to link out to anything but their Instagram account.

Most Visible: It Depends

The most visible brand advertiser varies based on the user. For awhile, the brand I saw the most promoted was @GotoMeeting. They were everywhere because they promoted their account and their latest tweet using Twitter’s advertising platform.

Use of Twitter advertising is probably one of the best strategies if you want to boost visibility as Twitter seems to do a good job of targeting based on your business’s keywords in relation to other user’s interests. The downside is that your ad budget can go pretty quickly - so you have to be vigilant about your advertising campaign’s daily budget and overall spend.

Measure Your Twitter Results

As you grow your targeted Twitter following, you should notice an increase in engagement. But don’t just assume that things are working. Know that they are by signing up for a free trial of SumAll and connecting your Twitter, Google Analytics, and e-commerce platform.

Then you will be able to see the connection from your Twitter growth, engagement, and visibility to your website traffic and sales.

Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, blog marketing expert, and social media enthusiast. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.