How Brands Use Twitter Effectively

Twitter remains a vital social media channel for most companies, despite recent competition from increasingly popular photo-sharing sites like Snapchat and Instagram. Studies show that over two-thirds of Twitter users have discovered a new small or medium-sized business (SMB) on the social network. More than a quarter of users have completed a purchase from a brand they’ve found on the platform. Almost 40 percent have visited a store of a business found on Twitter.

However, many treat Twitter as an advertising platform, an avenue to broadcast news about themselves, rather than a place to digitally converse with customers.

Kissmetrics recently explained how major brands are taking full advantage of Twitter.

JetBlue. JetBlue (@JetBlue) employs Twitter as a customer service platform. It does occasionally promote itself and hold contests on the network. It practically caused a stampede when it announced plans to distribute free tickets in Manhattan.  However, it makes copious use of @ replies, it responds quickly to questions, and never takes a day off. Lesson: If your brand uses Twitter for customer service, be committed and whole-hearted (and make sure your responders have in-depth training).

Whole Foods. Whole Foods (@WholeFoods) likes to share recipes and offer health advice. Providing links to valuable content has helped it gain 2.5 million followers. Lesson: Any business can provide value without selling something, whatever the niche.

Staples. Staples (@Staples), the office supply chain with 322,000 followers, frequently seeks customer feedback and often asks questions to spur engagement. Lesson: Companies can use Twitter to better understand customers and improve their products.

Dell. Dell has multiple accounts. Dell Outlet (@DellOutlet) concentrates on sales and promotions, while @DellCares focuses on customer service and @DellCaresPRO provides support for businesses. Lesson: Consider separate accounts that give consumers a choice and more specialized information and service.

Red Cross. The (@RedCross) feed is like a disaster news service. It provides video, photos and advice on how to find help. Lesson: Remember your organization’s purpose, remain authentic, and provide useful information.

Examples of Successful Twitter Strategies

HeliosDesign offers these examples of successful Twitter strategies.

Create games. Transform well known games into Twitter campaigns. For instance, South African ecommerce retailer, Kalahari.com, developed a Twitter game of Pass the Parcel to mark its 15^thanniversary. The key is to design a game based on a theme and use hashtags and campaign elements that support that theme.

Personalize followers’ tweets. Orange UK, the mobile phone company, asked followers to submit tweets with the hashtag #singingtweetagrams. Selected tweets were transformed into songs and tweeted back to the follower and featured on its website. You can turn fan tweets into T-shirts, food items, or animated short films.

Promote group momentum. Domino’s UK reduced the price of a pepperoni pizza by one pence for every 100 tweets with the hashtag #letsdolunch. The promotion ran for two hours and attracted 85,000 tweets, dropping the pizza price from £15.99 to £7.74 for the day.

Tips from Twitter

Twitter itself recently offered tips on how brands can compose effective tweets. Here’s a synopsis of some of the best.

Keep it simple. Like other types of writing, concise tweet copy helps the main message cut through. Research shows that tweets fewer than 50 characters generate 56% more engagement than those with 50 to 100 characters.

Provide direction. Don’t be afraid to ask consumers to complete an action: retweet, a like or choose a team. The best actions are simple, achievable and fun. You might ask people to choose between two favorite products.

Use hashtags correctly. Hashtags assemble conversations around a subject and promote search. It’s important to align the right content with the right hashtag. Coke’s #TasteTheFeeling is a superb example of hashtag use.

Humanize your voice. Twitter is a conversational platform, so it’s important to develop a human tone of voice for your brand. Queensland Police Media Unit (@qpsmedia) showed how to humanize a brand by establishing a Twitter persona. The group tweets about community safety, with relevant cultural news and humor.

Listen to Understand. By knowing what your audience wants, you can tap into consumer needs and create Tweets that inform, entertain or solves a problem. Samsung Australia tweeted at 9:30 pm New Year’s Eve on how to take effective photos of fireworks scheduled for midnight.

You can better understand the effectiveness of your Twitter campaigns by monitoring and measuring results.  How many followers, retweets, likes, and responses did each tweet, set of tweets, and the campaign as a whole generate? What was the level of engagement? Was it positive or negative? Can you trace any leads or sales to the Twitter campaign? The data will help guide your future efforts on Twitter – and other social media networks.

Bottom Line: Large, sophisticated brands use Twitter as more than a bullhorn announcing promotions. They also use Twitter for customer service, sharing worthwhile content with customers, and obtaining customer input to improve their products and services. Even small organizations can learn from these examples.