75 Twitter Statistics Every Marketer Needs to Know in 2021

If you want to grow your brand on Twitter, you need a comprehensive list of key Twitter statistics to help guide your marketing campaigns.

With over a billion users, Twitter is a treasure trove of advertising opportunities.

Twitter also provides a place to offer cost-effective real-time customer service, increase brand awareness and make a splash in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

But, before you create a Twitterstorm, it’s vital to know who’s using Twitter and how they’re using it. That way, you can shape your content to help, entertain, and inform your audience.

By the end of this post, you will be armed with the most powerful Twitter statistics you need to position your brand as one to follow, retweet, and ultimately, buy from.

What are you waiting for?

Let’s look at the stats!

General Twitter Statistics

1. Twitter users send out approximately 500 million tweets every day! That’s around 350,000 tweets a minute and 200 billion a year.
2. 90% of the U.S.  population has heard of Twitter, even if they don't use it.
3. Twitter turned 15 yrs old in March 2021.
4. Twitter is ranked the 6th most used mobile app. Now more than ever, it’s vital to publish mobile-friendly tweets so that they can be enjoyed by all of the Twitterverse, no matter how they access the platform.

Is Twitter growing or shrinking?

1. There are 1.3 billion Twitter accounts in total. 335 million are MAUs (Monthly Active Users). This number is predicted to grow 2.4% in 2021 and another 2% in 2022.
2. 192 million of those were mDAUs (monetizable Daily Active Users) by Q4 2020. This is up by 40 million users from the previous year. Along with in-site improvements, this whopping growth can be attributed to current events driving conversations, such as Covid-19 and the U.S. election.
3. Twitter’s total revenue for Q4 2020 was $1.29 billion, up almost 38% from the previous quarter.
4. There’s plenty of room for even more growth; Twitter can create and store over 18 quintillion accounts!

Twitter Demographic Statistics

1. 24% of all American adults use Twitter. Of this, 42% are aged 18-29 yrs old. As age increases, usage drops:

• 27% of users are aged 30-49 yrs old
• 18% are aged 50-64 yrs old
• 7% are 65 yrs and over

1. In the United States, 65% of Twitter users are Democrats or lean left, and 33% are Republicans or lean right.
2. 47% of urban Americans use Twitter compared to 34% of their rural counterparts.
3. From Q1 2017 to Q3 2020, U.S. Twitter users grew by 38%, while their international user base increased by 83%!
4. Twitter’s German audience grew by 30% in Q4 2020.
5. There are over 16 million users residing in the United Kingdom.
6. 49.7% of online Canadians have a Twitter account, and 50% access the platform every day.
7. 24.6% of verified Twitter accounts belong to journalists, and they use the platform to share breaking news.

Who is Twitter's target audience?

1. Twitter describes 80% of its user base as “affluent millennials.” The majority of American and Canadian Twitter users have a high annual income ($60,000+) and a college degree.
2. A look at Twitter users by country shows that in the United States, 61.6% are men, and 38.4% are women. (Currently, Twitter only reports on male and female for gender.)
3. Worldwide, the difference becomes even more pronounced; 70% of worldwide Twitter users are male, and just 30% are female.
4. After America, Japan and India are Twitter’s 2nd and 3rd biggest markets. Twitter is the #1 social platform in Japan!

Twitter User Statistics

1. The average Twitter user has 707 followers.
2. There are 391 million Twitter accounts with no followers at all.
3. Based on data from the last 6 months, the average time spent on Twitter is 10 minutes and 48 seconds.
4. Each tweet has a short lifespan of 15 to 20 minutes. While this may sound disheartening at first, it allows users to retweet identical posts at different times of the day to reach different audiences.
5. Twitter estimates around 48 million of its active users may not even be human.
6. The most retweeted and top-liked tweet of 2020 was the tweet announcing Chadwick Boseman’s tragic passing. With over 3 million retweets and 7.4 million likes, it is the most-liked tweet of all time.
7. The most popular Twitter account (based on “number of followers”) is Barack Obama, who has more than 130 million followers. 2nd place goes to Justin Bieber, with just over 114 million followers.
8. 7/10 of the most-followed Twitter accounts are Americans! Alongside Barack Obama, other Americans in the Top Ten include Lady Gaga, Ellen DeGeneres, and Taylor Swift.
9. 46% of American adults use the platform daily, 84% use it weekly, and 96% check in monthly.

Twitter Usage Statistics

1. Twitter is the #1 platform for discovery! This makes it an ideal space for launching new products and creating a buzz around your business.
2. Twitter has become a regular news source for 15% of all American adults.
3. Worldwide, this figure drops to 12% of adults using Twitter as a news source.
4. 9.6% of U.S. adults considerably increased their Twitter usage throughout the pandemic in 2020.
5. Twitter is one of the Top 5 most used social media platforms in the United States.
6. 99% of Twitter users also use at least one other social media platform. The majority reported using Facebook and/or Instagram alongside Twitter.
7. Video has found a home on Twitter too. Over 2 billion videos are watched on the platform every day! The number of views has increased by 62%  from 2019 to 2020, with a 72% year-on-year increase in watch time.
8. Twitter suspended 925,700 accounts for “hate conduct” in the first half of 2020. And 70,000 accounts were suspended in January 2021 after the attack on the U.S. capital in Washington, DC.

Twitter Marketing Statistics

1. 77% of Twitter users feel more positive about a brand when their Tweet receives a reply. Users also prefer brands that are culturally relevant, inclusive, and transparent.
2. Influencer marketing is very effective on Twitter. 40% of users reported purchasing a product/service after seeing it on the platform.
3. Twitter users spend 26% more time viewing ads on the platform compared to other leading social media sites.
4. People on Twitter are 53% more likely to be the first to buy new products.
5. Tweets with hashtags get 100% more engagement. With Twitter’s relatively new extended 240 character limit, there’s plenty of space to add a few hashtags and increase your reach.
6. Video ads are 50% cheaper when it comes to cost per engagement. This makes them a great way to squeeze the most out of your advertising budget.
7. 34% of consumers plan on using Twitter more in the coming year. Whoever your customers are, they’re on Twitter, and they’re open to your advertising efforts.
8. 53% of marketers won’t be left behind; they are also planning to increase their Twitter usage in the coming year.

Twitter Business Statistics

1. 59% of all B2B businesses use Twitter as a digital marketing tool, along with 53% of B2C businesses.
2. 19% of retail banks have a Twitter account exclusively for customer service queries.
3. With so many companies offering customer service via Twitter, 60% of users expect their customer service requests to be answered within one hour.
4. 82% of B2B content marketers used Twitter for organic content marketing in the last 12 months.
5. 27% of B2B content marketers used Twitter ads in the last 12 months.
6. When users were exposed to tweets from both brands and influencers, purchase intent increased over five-fold. It fell to around half of that when influencers weren’t involved in the campaign.
7. 49% of users rely on influencer recommendations. When compared to the 56% who rely on friends, it appears trust in influencers is soaring.
8. The best times to post on Twitter for engagement are on a Wednesday, and a Friday from 9 am. For consumer goods, the best time to post is on a Sunday at 11 am.

Twitter Advertising Statistics

1. Twitter has an advertising audience of 353 million. That figure is up 8% since Q3 2020.
2. More users see ads on Twitter than ever before. Ads are reaching around 164 million users daily. This is an increase of 23%  from Q1 2019 and another 8% from Q4 2019.
3. Currently, only 27% of B2B marketers use paid Twitter ads.
4. Twitter ads can reach 5.8% of the world population over the age of 13 yrs old.
5. Website carousel ads saw a 15% increase in CTR over single-asset ads on Twitter. This is worth keeping in mind when you're designing advertising campaigns.
6. 2020 saw a 35% increase in total ad engagements on Twitter. This growth was due primarily to the increase of ad impressions resulting from the surge of mDAUs.
7. Twitter is also seeing an increase in ad revenue. In Q3 2020, their total ad revenue increased by 15% year over year to $808 million.
8. Cost per engagement on Twitter decreased by 3% in Q4 2020, meaning it costs less to advertise to a bigger, more engaged audience.

Twitter Publishing Statistics

1. In the U.S., the median user posts 2 tweets a month, and the top 10% of Twitter’s most active users publish 138 tweets a month.
2. 92% of all U.S. tweets were generated by just 10% of adult Twitter users.
3. The most-Tweeted emojis in 2020 were 😂 and 😭. The ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji is also the most tweeted emoji of all time. It’s been tweeted over 3 billion times!
4. #COVID19 was the most-used hashtag of 2020; it was tweeted nearly 400 million times. The second most-used was #BlackLivesMatter. It was tweeted around 3.7 million times a day from May 26th to June 7th amidst global protests over George Floyd’s death.
5. The platform saw more than 7,000 Tweets about TV and movies every minute in 2020.
6. Users generated around 2 billion Tweets about gaming, a 75% increase from 2019. The topic also saw a 49% increase in unique authors, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the most tweeted video game.
7. Twitter users published a further 2 billion Tweets about sports.
8. With so many baking their way through the pandemic, tweets about cooking increased by nearly 30%.
9. 70 million accounts follow Twitter Topics, a setting that allows users to see more tweets related to the topics that they’re interested in.

Twitter Mobile Statistics

1. 80% of Twitter users access the platform on a mobile device.
2. 93% of video views are on mobile. These videos help build brand awareness, improve brand sentiment, and increase purchasing intent.
3. The 3rd top reason people use Twitter is to watch video content.
4. Video ads with website buttons get a 2x higher CTR than standard mobile ads. And, they boost user retention by more than 60% because users watch the video while the site loads.
5. There were 11.7 million App Store downloads of the Twitter app in Q1 2019, making it the 16th most downloaded app.

Use These Twitter Statistics To Grow Your Brand

It’s clear that Twitter deserves to be a crucial part of your marketing strategy.

What’s more, Twitter users are open to your brand’s presence, and they are on the lookout for the next big thing.

Shaping your content around a handful of these Twitter statistics will help you to strike the right note with your target audience.

Now bookmark this post so that you can keep referring back to these essential Twitter statistics as you create and implement your marketing campaigns.