• “Lots of followers” doesn’t necessarily equal “lots of engagement.” The list of the top 100 most-followed brands differs quite a bit from the list of the 25 most-engaged brands.
• “Posting a lot” doesn’t necessarily equal “lots of engagement,” either. The 25 brands with the greatest volume of tweets were not the same as the 25 most-engaged brands.
• What does lead to lots of engagement? Posting consistently. The two brands with the most consistent volume of content, #1 Notebook of Love and #2 Disneywords, were also the two most-engaged brands.
• Another factor in engagement is the type of content you tweet. Visuals rule the day here: more than three-fourths of the most-engaged brands’ content was photos. The second most popular type of content? Videos. Links and status updates made up a miniscule portion of their tweets.
• The day that the most-engaged brands were most likely to tweet was Wednesday, and the time of day when they were most likely to tweet was 4 p.m.

What do these findings mean to you? Should you start tweeting Wednesdays at 4 p.m. religiously? Not necessarily. What works on Twitter varies depending on your industry. However, this report provides lots of data you can use to compare yourself to your competition. In fact, if you go to smo.infinigraph.com, you can look up competitors in your industry and run a report to see what they’re doing on Twitter.

Ask yourself:

• What kinds of content are they tweeting, retweeting and sharing?
• What kinds of responses are they getting?
• How are they responding to followers’ tweets?
• What are they doing that you’re not doing?

As with most things in life, it’s not the quantity but the quality that counts. A well-planned, well-executed Twitter strategy works better than throwing a ton of tweets out in a frantic effort to be heard above the noise.

Part of quality is consistency. Your followers need to know what to expect, and that they can rely on you. Have you ever followed a Twitterer who started out strong and then disappeared? It’s better to start small and build from there than to start with a volume of tweets that you can’t maintain.

Keep in mind, too, that what works on Twitter will change over time, so following your competition and learning from what they do is the best way to stay on top of trends—and to modify your strategy so you can continue to grow your customer engagement.

What can you learn from the most engaged brands on Twitter? How can you improve your social media strategy to more successfully engage your customers?

While it’s often said that discounts and deals are the driving factors in consumers “liking” or following brands on social media, Rhythm found that loyalty to brands was an even stronger factor in customers’ engagement with companies. The study reports that 51.9% of mobile social media users follow brands on Twitter® and 55.9% like brands on Facebook® just to get deals or discounts. However, 60.7% say they follow companies on Twitter and 57.6% like brands on Facebook simply because they want to show their support for and loyalty to the brands.

Here are a few other interesting stats from the study:

• Getting exclusive content or updates about a business was cited as a reason to follow brands on Twitter by 51.1% of respondents and a reason to follow brands on Facebook by 39.8%.
• Customers are using mobile social media to engage with businesses in growing numbers. Nearly three-fourths (74%) use Facebook, and almost two-thirds (63%) use Twitter on mobile devices more than once a day. In addition, 68% have “liked” a brand on Facebook and 56% say they follow brands on Twitter.
• Although consumers use both smartphones and tablets to access social media, smartphones still predominate, with 62% of Twitter users and 74% of Facebook users saying they usually access the social media platforms on their phones.
• Companies are responding to the trend by increasing their mobile social media presence. Nearly one-fourth (24%) of marketers have mobile social media campaigns—a whopping 430% increase from the prior year.

What do these survey results mean to your business?

Pay attention to the mobile social marketing trend.

With the growth in this area, your business could get left behind if you don’t at least explore the idea of launching a social mobile campaign (which Rhythm defines as a mobile ad campaign that taps into your social media presence).

Make it easy for users to engage with your brand.

If you do launch a social mobile campaign, consider including social media buttons within the ad itself. Rhythm found this boosted user engagement by 36%, but less than one-third of marketers currently do it.

Don’t rely on discounts and coupons alone to drive customer engagement. A customer’s desire to support your brand simply to show loyalty means that what matters is your whole relationship with the customer. In other words, social media support is just one part of the whole package. Make sure your products and services deliver, your customer service is stellar, and that you’re constantly staying in touch with your customers to learn what they want and how you can improve. By creating a well-rounded customer experience, you’ll build raving fans who want to support your brand on social media—and offline, too.

How are you using social media to engage with your customers? Beyond offering discounts and special deals, how are you planning to increase your social media presence in the year ahead? We’d love to hear about your plans and your results.

Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media company specializing in covering small businesses and entrepreneurship. She has written this guest post for the Networking Exchange Blog.

Content marketing is getting results—and I’m not just talking about “fluffy” results such as likes or retweets of content. The biggest benefits respondents cited were increasing website traffic (77%), improving their companies’ search engine rankings (71%), increasing brand awareness (70%), and boosting sales (59%).

What types of content are small business marketers using? Articles were most popular, cited by 74% of respondents. Next are blog posts, used by 64%. Nearly half (49%) the small businesses report using content marketing as part of their social media outreach.

The report found some distinctions between the highest-earning companies surveyed and the average. While just 41% on average used email newsletters as part of their content marketing strategy, 56% of the high earners did so. And while only 38% on average used videos for content marketing, 53% of the high earners did so.

Although small business marketers are seeing good results from their content marketing, they had a lot of questions and challenges. Areas they struggled with included finding good writers; developing high-quality content more rapidly without spending a lot of money; and how to use keywords within content to maximize their SEO benefits. Although most content marketers are now using WordPress, they wish there were simpler tools to make it easier to publish content.

What are the takeaways for small business owners?

• Content marketing works

As the report author states, “Marketers are seeing massive benefits from content marketing even with minimal effort and minimal spending on content creation.”

• Spending more money gets better results

High-earning companies in the survey are more likely to spend more money on their content creation. They are also less likely to say that content marketing has helped cut their other advertising costs—in other words, they are still investing in advertising instead of solely relying on content.

• Start simple – but get started!

As my mother used to say, “Something is better than nothing.” If you’re currently not using content marketing at all, something as simple as creating a monthly email newsletter or posting one article a week on your website can make a huge difference.

• Give video a try

This is one area that respondents had a lot of interest in, and 53 percent of them planned to do more with video in the coming year. If writing isn’t your strong suit, filming some quick videos could be the fastest way to create content and get it out there.

Are you exploring the advantage of content marketing? What types of content have worked for your business? What challenge have you faced on the road to good content?

Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media company specializing in covering small businesses and entrepreneurship. She has written this guest post for the Networking Exchange Blog.

Before co-founding GrowBiz Media in 2008, Lesonsky was the long-time Editorial Director of Entrepreneur Magazine and author of the bestselling book Start Your Own Business.  This experience has given her an inside perspective on what entrepreneurs want, how to connect with them, and how to help them grow successful businesses. Rieva has worked with B-to-B marketers including American Express, Dell, Groupon and many others, and with organizations including ASBDC, SCORE and the SBA, to market to and educate entrepreneurs.  Lesonsky received the “Champion of Small Business” award by the Association of Small Business Development Centers and was named one of the nation’s top 100 Small Business Influencers in 2011.

You can get more small business information at her website, www.SmallBizDaily.com