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Twueless: How Fortune 100 companies suck at Twitter

A Weber Shandwick study concludes that Fortune 100 companies need a Twittervention. Executed successfully, Twitter can help companies engage with customers, build new relationships and create a new pool of advocates talking positively about their brands.

The Weber Shandwick study showed that 73 percent of Fortune 100 companies registered a total of 540 Twitter accounts. However, about three-quarters (76 percent) of those accounts did not post tweets very often, and more than half (52 percent) were not actively engaged. (This was measured by engagement metrics such as numbers of links, hashtags, references and retweets.)

In addition, 50 percent of the Fortune 100 accounts had fewer than 500 followers, a small number in relation to the size and reach of a major corporation. Another 15 percent were inactive; of those, 11 percent were merely placeholder accounts — unused accounts to protect corporate names against so-called brand-jacking on Twitter — and 4 percent were abandoned after being used for a specific event.

Weber Shandwick prescribes five essential steps as a starting point for Fortune 100 companies to create true engagement and market interaction on Twitter:

  1. Listen to conversations
  2. Participate in conversations
  3. Update frequently with valuable information
  4. Reply to people who talk about issues that are important to your company
  5. Retweet relevant conversation