This post was originally published on the IBM THINK Marketing blog by Haley Rose.

How to Use Twitter in the Information Technology Industry

We live in a digital world where the average person is exposed to over 5,000 marketing messages per day. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI and the average American spends 162 minutes on his or her mobile device per day.

Social media has dramatically changed over the past 3-4 years. Twitter is no longer a place for teenagers to mess around, and the largest growing segment on Facebook are users over the age of 55. Social media has become a fundamental shift in the way consumers and companies communicate.

Twitter, in particular, has become an extremely useful tool for marketing in the Technology industry. According to a study performed by ComScore, Twitter’s highest percent reach by age group is the 25-44 age range, which, for a large majority of businesses, is the current and soon to be future target audience for purchasing decisions. Additionally, Twitter’s age reach is only slightly lower than LinkedIn’s. See the chart below for Percent Reach by Age Group for each social network.

In addition, the average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to less than 8 seconds. Your marketing messages have to be visually appealing, short, and grab attention or else consumers are going to ignore you. Twitter’s 280-character limit makes it the ideal platform to use when marketing your brand.

3 reasons for social marketing in IT

Here are the top three reasons, you should be using Twitter for your business.

1. Brand Awareness: Twitter has the potential to reach 400 million people in the matter of seconds. Engagement leads to increased web traffic, visibility, and even face-to-face meetings. With Twitter, your brand has the opportunity to reach millions of people with short micro-blogging messages that engage users and provide relevant information.

2. The New Relationship Marketing: People don’t buy from businesses; they buy from people they trust. Twitter is the ultimate social tool for relationship and brand building. Unlike LinkedIn, which is strictly for business, Twitter users post about everything from the books they read to the technologies they use. It allows for people to cultivate relationships online, build trust, and set the face-to-face meeting.

3. Employee Brand Advocacy: Employees’ personal brands are really an extension for the corporate brand. On average, consumers trust peer recommendations more than 4x brand advertisements. By instilling a social culture at your company, you encourage employees to tweet and build relationships and in return build buzz for your brand.

The marketing landscape has changed. Consumers demand more, are more educated and ignore long messages. If you can’t convey your marketing message in 280-characters or less, it’s probably not worth saying.