Twitter can be a great leveler—it's free and can enable small businesses to find new customers in a way that was just not possible a decade ago. But "free" can be misleading—like any communications tactic, it takes time to learn how to use it well, and to keep using it well.
PR News recently launched a survey asking PR pros to share gauge how important Twitter is in their overall communications strategy and how they're using it learn more about their target audiences.
When asked where Twitter ranks in time spent on social media at their organization compared to other platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, 54% of respondents said they spend more time on Twitter compared to other social media platforms, 20% said they spend an equal amount of time on the various platforms, 17% said they spend less time on Twitter and 9% said they spend no time on Twitter at all. (see chart above.)
When asked to complete the following: "I know the makeup of my organization's Twitter followers…," 73% said they know them only somewhat well, but would like to know more, while 16% said they know the makeup of their followers extremely well and 11% said not at all.
63% of respondents said they're tweeting one to three times per day, while 17% said they are tweeting four to 10 times per day and 11 to 20 times per day. 
40% of respondents said they reply to tweets one or more times per day, while 34% said they do so one to four times per week; 26% said they never reply to tweets.
40% of respondents said they tweet out news releases one to three times per month, 34% one to four times per week and 29% said they never tweet news releases about their organization.
When asked how often they monitor the most important influencers in their market on Twitter, 31% said they never do, 29% said they do so daily and 14% said once per week.
According to this survey, PR pros are not only gravitating more to Twitter than other networks, they are mostly using it on a daily basis. However, they should consider diving deeper into the makeup of their audiences and monitoring influencers in their markets.
Follow Bill Miltenberg: @bmiltenberg