What does it take for a brand to engage with its audience on Twitter?

Social media startup Nestivity released a list of the top 25 most engaged brands on Twitter Thursday, taking a look at what exactly those brands do to engage their audience, and what other companies can do to reach the same level of engagement.

Brands were selected based on the results of a study that examined how brands cultivate relationships with influencers, customers and advocates on Twitter.

Conducted by Evolve Capital Inc. and Dr. Natalie Petouhoff from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, the study looked at the top 100 most-followed brands on Twitter. All in all that led to analyzing over 739,000 tweets over a months time.

“Most brands have fallen into the trap of using Twitter for push marketing: broadcasting messages and expecting to influence customers with little to no listening or community building,” says Nestivity founder and president Henry Min.

“This view of Twitter as a one-way communication tool severely limits quality interactions between brands and their customers. It is a short-sighted use of an inherently interactive communication channel,” he added.

Taking top honors in the Nestivity study was Notebook of Love (@Notebook), followed by Disneywords (@disneywords), and then ESPN (@ESPN), and PlayStation (@PlayStation).

Interesting to note: the most prolific of the 100 tweeted every 6-20 minutes, however, none of the most active accounts made the most engaged list.

When it comes to follower counts, a high number doesn’t necessarily mean an engaged audience. While all of the 25 most engaged Twitter accounts had over a million followers, so did the bottom 70% of the same.

As far as best practices, the group found that 76% of content that was shared had a photo attached, and 18% had a video as part of the message. As a whole, tweets sent between 2 and 5pm PST generated the most response.

Check out all the results of the study in the infographic below.