How Americans Are Using Twitter And What It Means For Music Marketing

According to a new study from Pew Research, Twitter usage in the US seems to have peaked at around 22%, with most of its content dominated by an even smaller percentage. Here we look into more of these numbers and what it means for artists and musicians on the platform.

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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

Twitter use seems to have plateaued at 22% of Americans, and a new study from Pew Research tells us exactly how those people use the platform. According to the study:

• Twitter is dominated by a small share of tweeters. The top 10% of posters are responsible for 80% of all tweets created by U.S. adults. That includes all types of tweets including original tweets, retweets and quote tweets.

• The average adult Twitter user doesn’t engage that much. The median Twitter user posts just 2 tweets a month, favorites one tweet a month, follows 89 accounts and has 25 followers.

• The most prolific tweeters are likely to be women. 65% of the most prolific tweeters are women. Women account for 48% of less prolific users.

• The most prolific tweeters are proud that use the platform. They’re much more likely than other users to say in surveys that they use Twitter every day.

This completely falls in line with another Pew study that found that social media use hasn’t changed much in a couple of years. Facebook and YouTube are the most widely used social networks for adults, while Snapchat and Instagram are especially popular with ages 18 to 25. Twitter falls somewhere in the middle for adults, but usage is about twice as high for Gen-Z.

What all this means for musicians, artist and bands is that you have to carefully pick the platform that your audience uses. There’s no point being on a service that doesn’t have users that you want to reach.

Twitter once held great promise, but now it’s starting to seem more like a platform for journalists and politicians. It’s good for news and opinion, but doesn’t show as much promise for promoting your music as it once did.