35% More Webmasters Use Twitter Than Facebook On Contact Forms

Facebook might be the bigger network, but several industries are betting on Twitter. According to Outreachr, 35 percent more websites in the travel, finance and motoring industries include Twitter on their contact pages than Facebook.

This data comes from over 100,000 websites evaluated for their social integration in the month of October, 2011.
A full 54 percent of those websites examined included an external link to their Twitter feed, and only 35 percent linked to their Facebook page. These figures don’t include plugins for the respective social sites on areas other than the website’s contact page, which were common for both.
But, the research went on to show that approximately 40 percent of Facebook users will interact with a brand, and only 25 percent of Twitter users will do the same – which throws into question why webmasters are choosing Twitter over Facebook.
However, as a possible explanation, previous research by Chadwick Martin Bailey suggests that Twitter users (while perhaps not interacting with the brand directly in as high volume as Facebook users), are extremely likely to recommend that brand to their peers if they follow it. This word of mouth recommendation process is extremely valuable on the social web, as a friend or colleague’s recommendation is more likely to lead to a purchase than many other kinds of advertising.
In any case, the Outreachr data does show that social is popular for webmasters across several industries – even more popular than email now. On the contact pages for the websites examined, less than 20 percent displayed an email address, instead preferring to use a contact form or social media to connect with their visitors.

By Lauren Dugan at MediaBistro