This post is part of our week of Twitter. Check out this page for all the posts.
Brands that have taken the leap into Twitter are exploring all kinds of approaches, with varying degrees of success. This is our list of those who have excelled themselves and those who have fallen short of the mark.
The Good
These brands have shown innovation in social media marketing and an understanding of how to engage with users. They’re our top pick of the best approaches by brands.
ComparetheMarket.com
In January 2009 a (fictional) meerkat named Aleksandr joined Twitter (@Aleksandr_Orlov), as part of comparethemarket.com’s Compare The Meerkat campaign. While the campaign includes TV, print and radio activity as well as Facebook pages and Flickr photostreams the simple Twitter campaign has proved to be a successful contact strategy; Aleksandr has more than 24,000 followers.
Aleksandr playfully engages with his audience and never mentions comparethemarket.com. The Twitter stream serves as a means of raising brand awareness and likeability and is a great example of a brand getting the tone of the medium right.
“Congratulations to England crickets team! Who would have thought Fred Flintstone could bowl so well.” [Aleksandr_Orlov]
“@Dulseon I love crickets. Cricket cream brulee is my favourite.” [Aleksandr_Orlov]
“@mass_dude If I come into contact with meerkat alien life I will be sure to add to website. Comparing meerkats is universal phenomenon.” [Aleksandr_Orlov]
Innocent
Innocent Drinks is a naturally playful and informal brand, it is therefore a perfect fit for Twitter (@innocentdrinks), maintaining the same tone of voice across all platforms. Like @Aleksandr_Orlov they rarely tweet about business, instead engaging conversationally with followers.
Their presence and activity on Twitter positions them as an innovative and youthful player in the social media space with more than 16,000 followers.
“Making an advert today. It's raining. Making a soggy advert today.” [innocentdrinks]
“The people's label has been chosen (and there's a sneak preview of our A/W packaging collection to boot) http://bit.ly/13RP7H” [innocentdrinks]
“@jamesmills @paulissima @BigSpud We're very glad you enjoyed your veg pots” [innocentdrinks]
“@queenmedusa77 Hello Kim, I've just asked about this year's closing date so will hopefully be able to get back to you soon.” [innocentdrinks]
VW
Thanks to Twitter’s API VW was able to develop a rich online media (OLM) campaign incorporating the service. The idea is simple; a user enters their Twitter username and their tweets are analysed to determine the VW that best suits them. The suggestion isn’t science, but it is an engaging way to make the marketing feel personal.
The Bad
The Daily Telegraph
During the run up to the April 2009 Budget the Daily Telegraph incorporated a TwitterFall into its Budget homepage. A TwitterFall is a feed that uses the Twitter API to gather all keyword mentions of a certain topic.
In the case of the Daily Telegraph it pulled in any tweets that included the hashtag #budget; however this was not moderated and it was in real time. Once this became apparent, users began to sabotage the Telegraph with tweets such as:
“Jacqui Smith ate my hamster… and claimed it on expenses! You couldn’t make it up! #budget” (@bigdaddymerk)
“Will Lewis (editor of The Telegraph) smells of old man’s pants #budget” (@BorisWatch)
The TwitterFall was, of course, quickly removed. Since the failure of the Daily Telegraph we’ve seen many other brands, such as Marmite, incorporating a smarter TwitterFall into their websites by pre-moderating the tweets they show.
Amazon
Twice a day @amazon tweets automated links through to articles on the Amazon blogs. For example:
“Snow Leopard Gets Officially Official, Ships August 28 http://tinyurl.com/mw4yss” [amazon]
The automated nature of the tweets means it is extremely impersonal and with no opportunity to interact with the brand. As a result the account has only 6,500 followers which is unusual for a large online brand.
The Ugly
There is one brand that stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to terrible Twitter etiquette; Habitat.
Habitat
Habitat set up the account @HabitatUK to publicise and drive traffic to a promotions page on their site. In order to get more eyeballs on their tweets they included ‘hashtags’; making the tweets appear in searches on trending topics, essentially spamming Twitter.
It later transpired that this activity was carried out by an intern (who was subsequently fired.) However, this has caused some users to try to find the intern, believing it was actually Habitat’s responsibility to train them.
“RT @drewn Wow, @HabitatUK really need to clean up their act. Not what you’d expect from an otherwise classy brand….” (@rachelandrew)
“Agree with @drewm & @roshorner, sad day when a reputable brand resorts to using hashtags to advertise. Technically Spam @HabitatUK” (@raymosley)
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