How do teens use Twitter?

Government has clearly embraced social media for citizen engagement purposes. But when it comes to social campaigns and audiences, one size doesn't always fit all.

Government has clearly embraced social media for citizen engagement purposes, but it’s worth remembering that when it comes to social sites, one size doesn’t always fit all.

This was emphasised recently when Twitter’s popularity among teen audiences became the subject of much debate following the flurry of research on Twitter usage, and an odd story about an intern at Morgan Stanley.

To provide some insight of our own, we asked Matthew Martin, a 16 year old intern who’s working at Cimex to gain experience in the digital industry, to tell us how he uses Twitter.

‘Ever since I was young, I’ve been known to be an ‘early adopter’. I was the first in my year group at school to get a laptop and an iPod, use social networking, register for a YouTube account and create a blog. So when Twitter came along, everyone knew that I’d make an account as soon as I could.

People don’t seem to see the reasoning behind Twitter, but I find that it’s an essential communication tool. The exchange of short information has been used for years in SMS messaging, so it’s only logical that this service should also be present online.

I began using Twitter just to see what it was like, and soon built up a base of followers all around the world (I currently have 300). Even though to some, ‘Following’ someone you don’t know seems like an invasion of privacy, I personally feel pretty happy when someone new follows my account. It’s a nice feeling; someone else out there thinks you’re interesting enough to listen to.

As with many Twitter users, my tweets don’t follow any particular pattern. I use them to advertise interesting websites, to write short film or book reviews, to talk about my life, or to share strange information I’ve found on the internet. This means that I have many varied followers, all ages, both genders. I feel that by being random, you gain the most followers because you attract a large audience. I also find that by conversing with your followers, you create a personal bond so you have a higher follower retention rate.

Another way to increase your follower count is to ‘retweet’ interesting information from the people you follow. If you retweet people, you also forge a friendship link with that person, so they will most likely retweet something of yours later on. This gives you a much wider audience, so you’re much more likely to gain followers.

You can also do this by using popular hash-tag topics in your tweets (a hashtag is a popular word or phrase preceded by a #, i.e. #iPhone). People can use Twitter to search for other people using the same hashtags in their posts, therefore showing that you have similar interests.

Twitter can be used very effectively for advertising. Companies with corporate Twitter accounts can often gain cult followings, so therefore increase and widen their reach on the internet. Linking back to your website or using Twitter to advertise a corporate blog has been proven to drastically increase web traffic.

Once people get onto your site through Twitter, they will probably take a look around your other pages. If they find your website interesting, they will retweet your link or website, so again spreading your brand across the internet.

I think that Twitter will continue to grow, and be used increasingly by companies for advertising. You just have to be careful not to spam your followers; bad reviews of you or your company will spread much faster than good ones!’

Follow Cimex on Twitter

Read more on Twitter and teens in the Guardian article ‘Challenging the idea of the young digital native’

Published: 17 Jul 2009

Tags: Customer insight