Twitter Survey: Many Follow Favorite Companies

Posted on January 2 2012 by Anne Pilon

A recent lawsuit involving social media site Twitter has many people talking about who actually owns a Twitter account. An employee of PhoneDog, who reportedly created a twitter account to use when posting about the company, was sued for taking the account with him after leaving his position. The employee says he created the account using his own email address and personal information, and even continued tweeting about the company after his departure. The company says the account is a sort of customer list, and so belongs to the company itself. So who really owns a business twitter account? And how many Americans actually follow these accounts anyway?

twitter

Following Businesses

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 63% of Twitter users said they do follow accounts run by businesses. Women and full-time workers were slightly more likely to follow companies on Twitter. Students were most likely to follow businesses they like.

Professional Tweets

Of those who follow businesses, only 16% prefer that they keep their tweets completely professional. 26% said they’d prefer that businesses inject some personality into their tweets. 36% said it depends on the type of business, and 23% had no preference either way.

Twitter Usage

As for their own tweeting, only 7% of respondents said they mainly tweet about professional subjects, while 61% tweet mostly about personal subjects, and 32% tweet about both. Another 10% of respondents said they’ve actually had access to their company’s official Twitter account.

So many businesses are using Twitter as a way to reach customers, and many experts believe the current lawsuit will shape the way many companies handle similar situations in the future. The widget below shows the results of the AYTM.com survey in full. Be sure to click “open full report” for full details.

Photo Credit: A man checks Twitter on an iPhone from Flickr

What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on December 28 via AYTM’s online survey panel.

Anne Pilon
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anne Pilon
Anne Pilon brings 3 years experience to AYTM as a blogger and journalist. She has a degree in journalism and marketing communications from Columbia College in Chicago and enjoys writing about business, marketing, social media, and art.