According to a recent study, 20 percent of tweets published are actually invitations for product information, answers or responses from peers or directly by brand representatives.

Jim Jansen, associate professor of information science and technology at the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at Penn State, along with IST doctoral student Mimi Zhang, undergraduate student Kate Sobel and Twitter chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury, investigated micro interaction as an electronic word-of-mouth medium, using Twitter as the platform. The results were published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences and Technology.

According to the report, the researchers examined 500,000 tweets. The team combed each tweet for brand mentions and analyzed the rationale, intent, and context that served as the foundation for each.

Their discovery?

People are tweeting to connect with the products and information.

The real question is, how does this information change or affect your current strategy and routine? As an aside, be thoughtful in your replies and assess whether or not a public response is warranted or if the back channel may prove more effective.

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