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Corporate Tweeting: Analysing the Use of Twitter as a Marketing Tool by UK Trade Publishers

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Abstract

The rapid growth and popularity of the microblogging service Twitter has been one of the most recent phenomena of the Internet, which opens up opportunities for businesses in general and publishers in particular to do marketing in a dialogue- and consumer-oriented way. This survey analysed UK trade publishers’ use of Twitter with the specific objective of finding out what influence a publisher’s size has on its Twitter adoption, patterns of use and the content of its Tweets. Overall, the results suggest that a publisher’s size primarily affects its general Twitter use, while being less influential regarding its patterns of use and the tweeted content.

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Notes

  1. In this study size could assume one of the following values: small (sales < £5.257 m in 2009), medium-sized (£5.257 m < sales < £87.915 m in 2009) or large (sales > £87.915 m in 2009).

  2. As a clear outlier with numbers of followers and followees deviating from the means of all other publishers by the factor 156 and 555 respectively, one account had to be ignored in this part of the analysis in order to keep the results unbiased.

  3. According to Twitter, Retweets are Tweets by another user which a followee forwards to his followers; Replies are Tweets posted in reply to another user’s message and begin with the other user’s username attached to an @-symbol [17].

  4. The variety degree regarding titles and authors was calculated by dividing the number of different titles/authors mentioned by the number of Tweets about books/authors. Consequently, a variety degree of 1 was reached when one title/author accompanied one Tweet; the minimum of slightly more than 0 was reached when one title/author accompanied all Tweets mentioning books/authors.

  5. Here publishing-related Tweets not only include miscellaneous publishing-related Tweets, but also Tweets about books, authors, the publishing house and trade events.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UCL Centre for Publishing, Department of Information Studies, University College London, London, UK

    Anne Thoring

  2. Bahnhofstraße 37, 48712, Gescher, Germany

    Anne Thoring

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  1. Anne Thoring
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Correspondence to Anne Thoring.

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Thoring, A. Corporate Tweeting: Analysing the Use of Twitter as a Marketing Tool by UK Trade Publishers. Pub Res Q 27, 141–158 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-011-9214-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-011-9214-7

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