Companies are attracting an increasing number of consumers on Twitter, with brands recording an average of 43% increase in followers last year, according to a recent report from ExactTarget Marketing Cloud.

Four industries in particular significantly increased followers in 2013: technology and manufacturing (up 93%), retail and e-commerce (75%), CPG (55%), and financial services (55%).

Below, key findings from the report, which was based on data from 3.6 million tweets (paid and organic) sent in 2013 by companies in 15 industries.

Engagement Rates by Industry

• Consumers across all the examined industries gravitate toward tweets that include photos.
• Tweets containing photos receive 3.3 replies on average, compared with 1.7 replies on average for non-photo tweets.
• On average, nine consumers retweet a photo tweet compared with five for a non-photo tweet.