And pipping tweeting world leaders to the post is Pope Francis. Every tweet by @Pontifex is retweeted 17,456 times on his Spanish and English accounts combined. In second place, is Saudi Arabia`s @KingSalman, who averages 4,419 retweets per tweet. Venezuela`s President @NicolasMaduro is in third place, receiving what the report describes as "a phenomenal 3,198 retweets per tweet on average."

The most followed world leader is US President @BarackObama with almost 60 million followers. But hot on his twitter tail is, again, the Pope. @Pontifex has almost 20 million followers.

"Since his election in late May 2014, India`s Prime Minister @NarendraModi has skyrocketed into third place, surpassing Turkey`s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (@RT_Erdogan) and the @WhiteHouse with more than six million followers each," says the report.

Britain`s Prime Minister @Number10gov is the most followed leader in the European Union, with more than three million followers.

The top four Foreign Ministries on the social network are the US State Department @StateDept, followed by Turkey @TC_Disisleri, the Russian @MID_RF and then the French @FranceDiplo.

The report finds that in the last year, foreign ministers and their institutions have "intensified their efforts to create mutual connections on Twitter."

Putting the French in first place, @LaurentFabius has mutually connected with 100 peers and world leaders, whilst closely followed by the Russian Foreign Ministry @MFA_Russia, which has 93 mutual connections with foreign ministries and world leaders alike.

An academic report — `Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Mission Follower Fallacy`, suggests that the most influential users "can hold significant influence over a variety of topics."

But that "influence is not gained spontaneously or accidentally, but through concerted effort such as limiting tweets to a single topic."

The study by Burson-Marstellar has analyzed the Twitter accounts of 669 heads of state, foreign ministers and their institutions in 166 countries worldwide. The most popular tweet was found to be an announcement by the Spanish Royal Palace, in June, about the King renouncing his throne. It was re-tweeted more than 28,000 times. The report also finds that Spanish is the most tweeted language of any world leaders.

However, the Royal Palace tweet could soon be usurped. According to The Sunday Times, Buckingham Palace will first announce the birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge`s second child on Twitter, doing away with decades of tradition where the news of the royal delivery would have been posted on a wooden easel behind the gates of Buckingham Palace.

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