Middle East Twitter users welcome brands, but ‘no spam thank you’

An overwhelming 95% of Middle East and North Africa Twitter users believe brands should engage with customers on Twitter, about nine out of ten say that Twitter has affected their perceptions of a brand or company and 50% of those surveyed have actually bought a product or service as a result of using the micro-blogging service.

The figures come from a new survey of Twitter users carried out by Spot On Public Relations, ’101 things brands should know about Twitter’. Many Twitter users in the survey also slammed brands that spam other users, broadcast impersonal messages and fail to listen to their customers on Twitter.

Carrington Malin, Spot On PR’s Managing Director, said:

“The concerns and negative reactions to brands entering social media are now well documented and have made many brands cautious of using social media platforms. Therefore, it’s great news for marketers in the region that people on Twitter actually welcome engagement with brands.”

“Most users surveyed felt brands should engage with customers on Twitter and 82% said they’d be more willing to buy from a brand that has a relationship with them over the service. However, the message that brands must prove themselves on Twitter by demonstrating that they know the difference between advertising messages and social media conversations, came through loud and clear,” added Malin.

’101 things brands should know about Twitter’, is available free of charge from www.spotonpr.com. The survey shows that Twitter is having an increasing affect on the relationship between its users and brands – the last survey carried out by Spot On, in August 2009 showed that only 61% of users had changed their perception of a brand via Twitter, versus nearly 90% in February’s survey. Some 53% of respondents had asked a brand for customer service and 36% said they had been proactively contacted by a brand on Twitter regarding a customer service issue.

“Twitter is fast moving and challenges brands to engage effectively with consumers, but with something like 65% of people telling us that they would be interested in receiving special offers or coupons from brands over Twitter and 88% of people saying they would recommend a brand based on their Twitter experience, it is becoming an increasingly powerful platform for brand engagement,” said Malin.

The survey includes 101 responses to the question, “What one piece of advice would you give to a brand using Twitter?” – some key responses including:

• “Don’t sell me anything and don’t talk about yourself… build a relationship with me and provide me with value, no strings attached.”
• “Take a less corporate and more human approach with your Twitter presence. Don’t make it sound like your tweets are part of your official company newsletter.”
• “Transparency, genuineness and respect for the customer are the more important than the media of communication. If you don’t get these [things] right, no amount of old or new media flogging will fix your image.”

“Those 101 responses alone provide valuable advice to any brand contemplating using Twitter as part of its marketing mix,” said Malin. “They reflect the unfiltered opinion of the people using Twitter in the region today.”

Spot On PR estimates that there are currently 35,000-40,000 registered Twitter users in the Mena region compared with a mere 3,000 users 12 months ago. Spot On’s Mena Customer Service & Twitter Survey was carried out in February 2010 and is based on 174 respondents to a questionnaire sent to them after they had been contacted via Twitter and had agreed to participate in the survey. It is published under a Creative Commons License allowing the report to be shared freely.