Before you pay to use Twitter, ask yourself if it’s worth it

A new report say that the majority of companies are planning to increase their spend on social media activities next year, but will it be worth it?

The Social Media and Online PR Report from Consultancy reveals that fewer than a quarter of companies are able to see a ‘tangible’ return on their investments, while just under two thirds had gained ‘more benefit’ from their spend ‘but nothing concrete’.

However, companies that have concentrated spend on social media have seen a return on investment with more than half of all firms that had made a significant effort saying that they had seen return.

Some 90 per cent of respondents said that social media is taking up more time than it did a year ago, while 86 per cent are planning to increase their budgets next year.

But you can’t ignore the recent comScore figures about users declining. Recent figures have shown that the number of users on Twitter has actually declined in the past three months, with growth down by 8.1 per cent.

Are users simply over the hype of Twitter?

Twitter launched in March 2006, two years after the social network that started them all, Facebook, which launched in March 2004. It’s taken almost three years, but the site now has more than 92 million users worldwide.

To put that in perspective, radio took 38 years to reach just half the amount of current Twitter users – 50 million. TV took 13 years and the internet, four.

Social networking isn’t just a fad, it is fundamentally changing the way we communicate, as we discovered at our Social Media roundtable earlier this year.

A number of major advertisers and brands have used Twitter as a way of communicating directly with their customers, but not only are new users down, Nielsen data reveals that traffic to Twitter was down 27 per cent during September and October. That means less eyeballs seeing your tweets! And yet, co-founder Biz Stone announced this week that the site will be launching paid accounts next year.

The site is also considering signing further deals with companies to licence its content and live streams, just as it did recently with Yahoo, Google and Microsoft’s Bing, that will see your tweets in search results. But it also means that your tweets will have to spot on, full of key words and be engaging. Is this too hard to achieve for brands in just 140 characters?

As it is, only 10 per cent of Twitter users accounted for 90 per cent of all tweets as of May 2009. A study from Harvard Business School confirms that the typical Twitter user tweets “very rarely”, while the average number of tweets per user over a lifetime is just one. People are losing interest and brands and advertisers are failing to ‘tweet’ about anything compelling.

A report last week said that users on were tech-savvy and usually work in the media and marketing industry.

And surprise surprise, the brands they are talking about the most include Google, Apple and Amazon followed by a mix of tech companies and other strong global brands like Starbucks, Disney and HP.

But one of the biggest complaints made by Twitter users about brands on the site was that tweets need to be “more human”.   

Using Twitter to promote brands just got harder. And while tweet may direct users to your website or attract them to deals or even just engage with your consumer, one must wonder if there is any real future in this micro-blogging site. Has the hype ended? Or has it just begun?

Twitter seems hell-bent on making next year it’s revenue year. But despite all the media attention, many are wondering what the future holds for Twitter and marketers will soon wonder if Twitter is worth the investment, especially when it competes alongside so many other social media sites that are yet to lose users or suffer declines.