22% of UK businesses willing to pay for additional Twitter functionality, reveals survey

by2020[UK] Is Twitter good for business? That’s one of the questions that a recent poll of 1,200 UK businesses, conducted by Accredited Supplier, hoped to answer.

While those surveyed were bullish about Twitter’s future – 48% think that Twitter will be the world’s largest social media property by 2020 – UK businesses seeing a return of investment are currently in the minority. Just 16 percent. The poll also reveals that many are utilising Twitter in a rather half-hearted way, although countering this, a significant number of respondents said they would be willing to pay for additional business-related functionality.

Asked how often they tweet, only 14% said they did so on a daily basis. 21% tweet weekly, 22% monthly, and worse still 43% of businesses said that don’t even manage that. With such a low level of tweeting, any kind of return of investment is going to be hard to measure – Twitter’s a great tool for monitoring positive and negative perceptions of a business, but actually engaging with customers is where the service potentially comes into its own.

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Unsurprisingly, branding was seen as Twitter’s main business use (62%) compared with sales (15%). Although 33% of those polled said they used the microblogging service for both.

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Of most interest to Twitter itself, however, is that 22% of UK businesses said they would pay to get additional business functionality versus 36% who said they wouldn’t and 42% unsure.