4 Tips for Your Twitter Marketing Strategy From 20 Top Brands

What’s your Twitter marketing strategy? Is it working?

There are over 350,000 tweets posted every minute of every day. How do you ensure your messages stand out? Google, Nike, Starbucks and more big brands, fought for attention and won. Luck or brilliant Twitter marketing?

18 Brands, 2 CEOs, 9 Industries => The Perfect Twitter Marketing Strategy

We took a close look to learn how these big names got it right. We fired up Talkwalker’s social listening tool and, using Interbrand for reference, chose 18 top brands from 9 industries. To mix it up a bit, we added a couple of CEOs you may have heard of.

We mined a years’ worth of data from each brand. Measuring hashtag usage, most successful tweets, if and how brand ambassadors and influencers were employed, and engagement with customers.

Below are some examples of what worked for these global giants on Twitter. You can read the full report of all 20 brands and discover how they rocked Twitter and find inspiration for your own Twitter marketing strategy.

Don’t be Shy – Be Like Branson – Tell it Like it is!

If you believe what you say, if you can back it up – tweet it – engagement stats relish it!

 

Richard Branson loves to express his opinion, and why not. He’s not doing it to be adored, because often the comments he receives are negative. He says what he believes, he shares his passions, whether it’s #VoteRemain for the UK to stay in Europe, or #readbyrichard books about improving the justice system.

If your brand is attacked, you must address the negativity and protect your brand. Donald Trump’s slur on The New York Times brought a mature and measured response.

 

Siemens suffers negative comments on Twitter with regard to environmental issues. Rather than responding directly, it regularly posts tweets with positive hashtags like #CleanEnergy and #Ingenuity.

 

 

Read more about Siemens, The New York Times, Richard Branson, and other global brands.

Collaboration Works - Nike #justdoit Right!

Of the 20 brands, Nike topped the tweets with a video of a nursery filled with cots, each containing a sporting hero - Serena Williams, Mo Farah, Neymar Jr, LeBron James, Zhou Qi – Nike brand ambassadors. Subsequent tweets from Nike took each sporting hero and showed their story, “My story began…”.

Brand ambassadors and influencers aren’t always planned, as the following tweet about Starbucks shows.

 

An A-list celebrity suffered a case of mistaken identity whilst ordering a drink. She tweeted and it quickly went viral – 19.9K retweets and over 47K likes. Starbucks responded with an apology and asked if her drink was good, earning 957 likes in the process.

Read more about the power of brand ambassadors and influencer marketing.

Stay on Top of Trends – Beat Google to Them – You’ll Have to be Fast

Google loves a trend and skilfully employs newsjacking, almost daily. It works for the brand as it keeps its Twitter account interesting without the heavy selling of products. The result? Google received the most mentions and second most retweets of all the brands we studied. It’s a cool feed to read and catch up on what’s going on globally. The following tweet jumped on two trending hashtags simultaneously.

 

Nike sells groovy trainers, so it’s quick off the mark. In the example below, Nike released 89 pairs of self-lacing shoes, inspired by the movie, Back to the Future. The shoes were put into auction and proceeds went to the Michael J Fox organization, a foundation sponsored by Nike that’s trying to find treatment for Parkinson’s disease. Nike not only jumped on the Back to the Future movie that has an almost cult-like following, it also demonstrated its social conscience.

 

Nike Back to the future

 

Want to newsjack like Google and Nike - use Quick Search to find trending stories.

Keep it Human, Keep it Social – We All Like to Feel Valued

Some brands wait for a crisis before racing to Twitter and tackling it, or only respond if there’s a customer service problem. Twitter is so much more. It should never be considered purely a news feed and selling platform. Used well, it will bring your business and audience closer, build a relationship. It can increase traffic to your website which in turn, can improve your search engine page ranking; and you can engage with current customers whilst reaching out to new ones.

Human connection matters; replying to people who mention your brand with personalized tweets, asking questions, injecting humour – these things go a long way. Your followers will appreciate the effort and you’ll increase engagement and improve brand awareness.

When Elon Musk was stuck in traffic, he tweeted about building a new product. He broke the unofficial rules of Twitter good-practice and tweeted without an image and without using hashtags, yet his tweet got 55.3K engagement.

 

Siemens receives negative comments, as previously mentioned. To counteract, it tweets positive hashtags and promotes its social conscience. It also has a powerful brand ambassador in its Chief HR Officer who regularly tweets about Siemens’ activities using hashtags that include #gender #equality #diversity #ability #ingenuityforlife #greenbuilding.

 

 

Find Inspiration for Your Twitter Marketing Strategy

Your Twitter marketing strategy can make or break your brand. What’s the social media ROI of chatting on Twitter with followers? It’s a whole lot more than financial return. It’s about being human; and no matter the size of your company, it’s what your followers appreciate, it’s what they want. To learn more about how these brands and more are rocking it on Twitter, read the full report – Top 20 Brands On Twitter – Playing Their Cards Right In 2016.

read full report

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