If your business can benefit from networking, and most can, Twitter is for you.
Canada ranks 5th in Twitter use around the world at 2.9%. Although that doesn’t sound like a very big share, the U.S. accounts for 51% of all Twitter users, followed by U.K. (17%), Australia (4%), and Brazil (3.4%). For Canada, the actual numbers of Twitter users comes to just over 4 million people, and that has tripled since 2009 ( Sources Webfuel – Canada Social Media Statistics, Ipsos – Social Listening Ipsos Trends and Nielsen Social Media Report 2012).
About 3% of Twitter accounts worldwide, according to the Nielsen report, belong to entrepreneurs. Across Canada, small businesses are increasingly seeing the need for engaging their markets using Twitter, so we have a much deeper penetration among entrepreneurs than much of the world. According to a BMO study from June 2012, 31% of businesses in Canada that use social media in their marketing efforts make use of Twitter.
The top three reasons why businesses use social media are:
- To promote brand or reputation (33 per cent)
- To gather ideas or suggestions from people (23 per cent)
- To sell business products or services (23 per cent)