By CRAIG HARDING*

TWITTER is one of the fastest growing social marketing mediums and it can play a valuable role in your marketing and communication mix.  But it is important to put its value into perspective.

Twitter has grown exponentially over the past five years. In 2006, it was just an idea with three people working on it. Fast forward to today and it has more than 200 million users and the platform could be worth as much $10 billion. Both Google and Facebook are rumoured to be keen to acquire Twitter to access its vast audience and are looking at a price tag of between $8 billion and $10 billion.

Well that’s its takeover value, but what is its real value as a marketing and communication tool? Who uses Twitter and what are they posting? Some facts.

Almost half of the 200 million tweeters worldwide are aged between 18 and 34 (45 percent) and 53 percent of all users don’t have children. Some 54 percent of users are women and 46 percent men and they are spread fairly evenly throughout all income brackets. Tweeters are regarded as the best connected of the connected.

While business has yet to embrace Twitter in a major way, our politicians have quickly appreciated its value. Our globe-trotting Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd is said to have more than one million followers and while that is well short of US President Barack Obama’s 8.1 million, it is a significant number. But both political tweeters are still shy of top of the pops’ tweeters Justin Bieber with 9.8 million followers and Lady Gaga with 10.3 million.

The American digital library Infographics Archive has assembled statistics on what people post. Not surprisingly 40 percent of all tweets can be categorised as pointless babble. Nearly 38 percent is made up of conversational messages between family and friends, six percent is self-promotion and four percent news. Some 8.7 percent of tweets have pass-along value - that is information worth knowing and that can be used to add to your knowledge base, build a brand reinforce communication and help your business or organisation.

It took three years two months and one day from launch to record the one-billionth tweet. Currently, one billion tweets are sent every week. Just one year ago, the average number of tweets sent per day was 50 million. The average number in February 2011 was 140 million a day and less that one-month later, on March 11, 177 million tweets were recorded.

While less than nine percent of tweets having ‘pass along value’ may seem small, this ‘value’ sector is growing, as is the total Twitter population, so it cannot be ignored as an effective marketing and communication vehicle.

* Craig Harding is Marketing Director at strategic communications and marketing consultancy Corporate Communications (Tas) Pty Ltd. Corporate Communications is able to advise clients on developing social marketing strategies and how to best incorporate social media in their marketing and communication activities.