Australian Twitter Statistics

2010

Overall the state of the twittersphere is:

• Globally twitter’s audience levels grew by more than 400% in 2009 [1]
• Demographics globally show the majority of users (39%) are aged between 18-34 years and are Caucasian [2]

Although Twitter accounts in Australia lag far behind Facebook, there has been a big rise in Twitter usage:

• There are approximately 2.5M twitter accounts in Australia although only 16% of twitter users are aged under 24 years old [2]
• Within Australia nearly a quarter of online Australians (23%) read ‘tweets’ in the past year [1]
• 14 percent ‘followed’ companies or organizations via Twitter (up from 5% in 2008) and 13 percent posted ‘tweets’ (up from 4% in 2008) [1]
• The majority of accounts are in NSW (over 35%), seconded by Victoria (27%) [3]

More Web Metrics

References

[1] http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/australia-getting-more-social-online-as-facebook-leads-and-twitter-grows
[2] http://www.webkrunk.com/2010/04/13/twitter-demographics-infographic/
[3] http://blog.tribalytic.com/2010/05/13/how-many-australian-twitter-users-are-there-and-where-are-they-from/

Tweeting from different twitter accounts is a complex business, not least because it can easy to post a tweet from the wrong account. Here’s how I do it:

My main ‘me’ account is @dreamingspires (focussed on health, publishing and social media in the main), and I have a neuroscience twitter account of @bodyinmind which is focussed on… neuroscience.   Sometimes health and neuroscience overlap and I want to tweet from both accounts.

It would be regarded as spam if I posted the same tweets from both accounts if you are following both in your twitter stream, but if you are following only @dreamingspires you would expect me to tweet the major neuroscience news as well. What to do?

I put the question out to a medical twitterer @DrVes who manages multiple accounts very well [read tweets bottom up]

In a nutshell different topics can use different accounts, and sometimes you will post from both BUT there is a fine line between occasional duplicate posts and SPAM.

One person who manages this well in the social media sphere: @thewordpressguy (solving the world’s ills of wordpress questions) is also @thelatteguy (organising Sydney twitter coffee mornings) – a good call to separate them as they are different subjects, even though a lot of people who need wordpress advice also are at coffee mornings.

Practicalities to avoid the mistake of answering someone from the wrong account as I have done here

If you do use Tweetdeck be careful of its eversonothelpful new feature of selecting the account you tweet from depending on which column you reply from.

Tracking replies

Tweetdeck won’t register all the replies from different accounts unless I setup several separate columns which my screen isn’t big enough to do – so I use echophon for @bodyinmind to see if there has been any replies, and tweetdeck or seeismic as my mainstay (see previous post on how to use these).

I am going to start using Brizzly more – it is a reader that works with Twitter and facebook and has a nice clear interface

Peoplebrowsr which has a lot of functionality and really does have everything at your fingertips, but it is a fiddly application on a smaller screen.

Whatever you decide to use please note that different accounts are still ’personal’ – in the sense they aren’t just simply information streams – and sometimes it can feel a bit like trying to be part of 2 different busy conversations at the same time.  You need to be consistent, even if you only post once or twice a day.

Conclusion

Tweeting from multiple accounts is good when:

• you have different subject areas
• different audiences
• different blogs that you are using the twitter info from
• or need an alterego to vent from!

Use one main application like Tweetdeck for all your accounts and an additional one like brizzly or echophon that you can quickly check replies that may not appear on tweetdeck.

Comments? Helpful hints?

Thanks @laikas – great thing to tweet

I recently visited Choice Australia to talk about their Social Media Advisor position and Social Media policies.  The question I am often asked is – where are the boundaries between personal social media sites like blogs and twitter and using them for your company? Choice Australia have found an excellent balance. When researching about the Company I found it easy to find

• Choice Australia had a Social Media presence
• The face behind the Choice Australia – ‘Choice Australia tweeted by @swandives’
• @swandives twitter profile led me to a name  ’Georgina’ and her blog ‘Swandives‘ – on fishing amongst other things starring a beautiful (but very dead) rainbow trout.

It was a pleasure to research, @swandives has her own social media presence which will remain with her wherever she works, and also her professional one and looking at Choice Australia followers on both the Twitter and the Facebook sites she is doing an exceptional job -both sites are thriving, followers are engaged, asking questions and providing responses.  It’s the ‘human’ and intelligent face behind the company that people can engage one-on-one with.

Questions asked included

• how would you get 110 people to use social media in the office as part of their very varied jobs
• where is the boundary between personal social media and company social media
• have you had any disagreements in social media and how did you deal with it
• how would you get your guy in the lab who is busy testing washing machines and looking at evidence-based data to use social media (answer: show them the evidence-based data that can come out of social media, scienceblogs … etc)

Choice are also revamping their website in the next few months, adding more social media elements to engage with their audience which is already vocal in what they want and like (don’t like).  Their new CEO, Nick Stace, joined only in February from the UK where he was also former deputy CEO of British consumer group Which? (and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Director of Strategic Communications) is making a significant difference to the company.  The office has been revamped and has a modern look with people engaged and involved with what the company is currently testing – treadmills were being tested by one of the team when I was there.  It remains to be seen what impact the Governments decision on pulling the Grocery Choice website will have.

The question still remains for others ‘Suppose I twitter and my boss sees me — or my work mates’ ‘how can I blog and express an opinion when I work for someone else?’

Some Companies have been slow to use social media whereas their employees want to, and policies are being drawn up as to the do’s and don’ts – but really it’s your voice and the question is can you be told who you can talk to and what you say online?  The rules of social engagement online are similar to those in conversations face to face.

Building up your online presence as yourself will stay with you long after you leave a company.  If you are using social media to express company views don’t forget that it’s still worth having yourself separately online as ‘you’ which will always be with you.  If you are blogging you might add a disclaimer to the effect that anything written does not reflect the company you work for.

From The Cluetrain Manifesto:

We’re both inside companies and outside them.  The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today.  but they’re really just an annoyance.  We know they’re coming down.

There’s legal risk in freer communcation between employees and customers.  Companies accustomed to issuing pronouncements from a single tightly controlled department find this conversational shift somewhat terrifying.  The intersection of the webbed world with business as usual leaves much legal ground uncharted.  While we’re waiting to see how our laws will evolve to met these realities it might be prudent for companies to consider which is more damaging: silence, or talking to customers in many individual voices.  Is the the legal risk posed by unfettered speech always a valid excuse for not speaking?

However, some Social Media Policies may have overstepped the mark — although Companies need to have a policy in place for when an employee does say something ill-considered, The Associated Press’ policy asking Employees to delete what others say on social media sites like facebook pages is venturing into new territory and bringing out the Unions.

“If you don’t trust your employees to tweet freely, it’s an employee or leadership issue, not an employee Twitter policy issue.” – Zappos.com CEO -Tony (Via SwitchedOnMedia)

Following certain steps when using twitter can yield high quality uptodate information on topics relevant to you.  Following on from my How To Use Twitter for Research Video, these are some of the steps I take.

Step 1 Find The Right People To Add To Your Network

• The most useful people to add are those who post links and information regularly on topics that interest you
• Take the top 5-10 people you find the most useful of the people you follow and look at the profiles of the people they follow and add them to your network
• Look at the profile of each of your new followers and decide if you want to add them to your network by following them back
• Don’t feel obliged to follow everyone who follows you – you’ll end up with a twitter stream that is full of twitter noise and not of much use to you
• When you get to the point you can no longer keep up with the twitter conversations go through your list of people you follow and decide if they are still relevant to your twitter info stream.  If not unfollow

A note on Unfollowing: When using twitter in this way unfollowing or following should not be taken as a personal slight (and the same goes if you are unfollowed) – your followers may be grateful for a warning if you let them know you’ll be posting on a particular topic that may not be relevant to them (eg conference proceedings) and let them know when to follow you back should they want to.  Comment by Teresa Blaes on my last post:

‘I find it interesting that you only return follow some people, while other people in the social media space like to return the twitter love. I guess, that it is as you said, it all depends on what you want to use twitter for.’

• MrTweet, or a TwitterSearch can help you find people although the results can often be too general

Step 2 Managing Your Twitter Conversations

• Applications like TweetDeck help manage and organize various twitter streams (for example I have several twitter groups I follow: Professional; twitter users who live close to me; and friends.  (Linking to twitter users who live close to you can open up new avenues of conversations and physical meet ups which in themselves can be very rich in the information they provide.)

Step 3 Finding Information

• Consistency and regular use is important in getting the most out of your twitter stream
• Depending on the number of people you follow, log onto twitter and open every link your twitter network has posted.
• To do this efficiently hold the control key and then click on the link – this opens a new window for each link while keeping your original twitter window open.
• You can then decide whether to look at the link then and there or click on all the links first and then look at them window by window (which I find is a more efficient use of time)
• A very quick scan of the website will tell you if what has been posted is useful or not.
• If the link is to a blog or website that will be useful add the RSS feed
  
  to your GoogleReader or Feedly or email subscription and you have added a regular new source of information to your news feed.
• Add twittersearch to your google search box – see what people have said about a particular product or situation around the globe – it’s powerful feedback

Step 4 Sharing information

• Sharing information lets people know what you are interested in and adds to your followers information stream
• Posting links on Twitter, applications like TinyURL shorten the links (TweetDeck will also do this automatically for you)
• Microblogging: increasingly twitter can also be used to post links which can then be collated together into a blog post
• Posting good information on Twitter will also mean people of similar interests find you which results in an informative Twitter network of people that you may not have yourself thought to seek out
• Use key words when you post your link.  Simply posting: ‘This is good http://tinyurl.com/d8welt‘ doesn’t tell your readers not very much: but ‘Video on how to use Twitter for Research http://tinyurl.com/d8welt‘ will not only let your readers know what the link is about but enable others who are searching Twitter to find you.  For example, mentioning the word Sydney in my posts has meant a lot of Sydney twitter users have linked to me which has been useful for me
• InstaHelp:  there has been many an occasion I have asked a question and had top rate answers and links back – far more quickly and specifically than a Google search
• Having Fun: as with most things, if you’re enjoying connecting with people and sharing information, the chances are you’ll get a lot of rewarding conversations with Tweeples as a result.