Just How Important is Twitter to Inbound Marketing, Really?

If you have blog posts, special offers, ebooks or anything else you want lots of people to know and talk about, then Twitter presents great opportunities. However, you needn’t settle for just our word on that – we have data from more than 7,000 businesses that shows the impact of Twitter on actual inbound traffic.

1. What is the impact of Twitter reach on inbound traffic?

Our Inbound Marketing partner HubSpot has made available a wealth of marketing data from its thousands of customers. We’re pleased to present it to you in the form of our latest ebook Marketing Benchmarks from 7,000+ Businesses. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the chart shows that the more Twitter followers a company has, the greater the impact on inbound traffic. The biggest changes occur when the following goes from 51-100 to 101-200, and from 201-500 to 501+.

2. What is the impact of Twitter reach on traffic for B2B and B2C companies?

The chart below shows gradual changes in traffic related to increased Twitter following, until we get to more than 1,000. Interestingly, Twitter seems to be of fairly equal benefit to both types of company, but really comes in to its own for B2C businesses with more than 1,000 followers.

Twitter has always had more influence with consumers, who tend to trust the opinions and recommendations of their friends and family. It is these same users who are more likely to share things too, such as interesting articles about – or pictures of – impressive new products.

3. I run a small-to-medium size business – is Twitter for me?

According to our data, an emphatic yes! Benefits of increasing Twitter followers helps medium-size businesses of 11-50 employees more than businesses with fewer than 10, but the difference does not become pronounced until we reach more than 500 followers.

Large companies of more than 1,000 employees tend to see the greatest increases in traffic tied to Twitter following, on average, largely because the brands and products involved are already well known, marketing budgets are more sizable and the campaign initiatives that come as a result more imaginative.

To sum things up with a couple of statistics:

• Companies with 50-100 followers generate 106% more traffic than those with 25 or fewer.

• B2C companies experience a larger increase in traffic than B2B companies after reaching 1,000 Twitter followers.

To see more charts linking not only social media but landing pages, website pages and blogging to traffic and lead generation, download our free Marketing Benchmarks from 7,000+ Businesses.