A recent report from Exact Target has shown that active Twitter users (rather than those that log onto the site once in a blue moon) are three times more likely to influence other people than a Facebook fan.

This is clearly big news for brands and for social media PR campaigns.

The study found that, among ‘daily users’ of Twitter:

• 72% publish blog posts at least once a month
• 70% comment on others’ blog posts
• 61% write at least one product review a month
• 61% comment on news sites
• 56% write articles for third-party sites
• 53% post videos online
• 50% make contributions to wiki sites
• 48% share deals found through coupon forums

What this demonstrates is that tweeters are incredibly active members of the online ecosystem and will take information and content they find on Twitter and then spread it far and wide across the web.

In essence, these people are what we would usually refer to as ‘influencers’. They have large networks – both on Twitter and elsewhere – and are curators or selectors of content, which they then share to these highly cultivated networks.

Using influencers

For brands, this means that not only can you build big communities on Twitter, you can use these communities, their networks and their willingness to share to take your social media PR message far beyond the network itself.

For those of us that are running social media PR campaigns, these insights are valuable reminders of where we should allocate time and resource and how certain channels can be used to transmit influence further afield.

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