Why politicians love Twitter: Tweets drive real donations

A new study shows that political tweets increase visits to donation sites dramatically.

(Credit: Twitter )

Twitter users may be tired of political tweets streaming through their feeds, but they shouldn't expect the flow to subside, because those tweets are driving actual political donations.

In a study Twitter conducted after last week's first presidential debate between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and released today, the microblogging service said that people exposed to any kind of political tweet are 98 percent more likely to visit a donation page as the average person on Twitter. Not only that, but even the average Twitter user is 68 percent more likely to visit such a page than the average Internet user.

Indeed, the study demonstrated that political tweets are more likely to drive visits to political donation sites than are normal visits to political Web sites.

And repetition clearly works, too. In a blog post on the study, Twitter's director of political ad sales, Peter Greenberger, wrote that the more days someone is exposed to a po... [Read more]