A recent study by Pear Analytics sought to determine the content of what is being posted to Twitter. They took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value.  Pointless babble won with 40.55% of the sample.

The stat itself is not that surprising but it certainly re-emphasizes the importance of emphasizing quality over quantity when it comes to those of us who use Twitter for business. Of the categories used in the study, only news, conversation and pass-along value really have a place in business tweets. One could argue that self-promotion belongs in the mix as well but that needs to be used sparingly in your Twitter content mix if you expect to retain the interest of your following.

Here is link to the PDF of the full study. It contains several interesting stats about how Twitter is being used. Very useful.