Another new study… another situation where we see the results a little differently than they’ve been presented elsewhere.

So what’s the story? Do we need new glasses after all? (That’s possible. After all, we’re not as young as we used to be.) Or maybe we just need to wipe the monkey prints off the ones we have…

Or is it our natural optimism shining through? Have we once again found the glass-half-full perspective?

New glasses… smudgy glasses… half-glasses… Before you start wondering whether we’ve drained a few glasses, let us get to the point.  (Yes… we have one.)

eMarketer is reporting the results of a new study from Lab42. The market research firm surveyed Twitter users in the US, and came away with some interesting information about brand engagement:

Only 11.1% of US Twitter users said that following brands was the leading reason why they use the site.

 

Doesn’t seem particularly promising, does it?

Click graph to view full-sized.BUT… that’s not the whole picture. Have a look.

While only a relatively small percentage of Twitter’s users join for the specific purpose of following a brand, an overwhelming majority of users end up doing exactly that. Over 30% of users follow between one and five brands, and nearly 20% follow six to ten brands.

In fact, over 89% of US Twitter users follow at least one brand!

So, the way we see it, it doesn’t matter why those folks started using Twitter… What matters is that only 10.6% of them aren’t following at least one brand.

Glass half full? We’ll drink to that!