Birds of a feather flock together, and in social media, keeping your brand and your followers together is the key to a successful social networking campaign. While each social media platform provides unique ways to reach out and engage your fans, friends, and followers, Twitter is becoming an extremely popular way companies can connect with and convert their prospects into customers.
The best way to do that is to use your Twitter account to reward your active followers for choosing to see your tweets and content in their feed. Providing them with timely, unique content that helps them feel connected to your brand is key to not only growing your list of followers, but to also see them take the next step toward becoming a committed client.
Take a look at these Twitter campaigns that successfully increased the brands’ reach and found new ways to attract and engage their followers.
Learn from Big Brands: Five Unique Twitter Campaigns
1. Treasure Hunt
The advent and growth of Pokémon Go — with more than 20 million active daily users in the U.S. alone — shows that users are looking for a way to connect their technology and their daily lives. LG was on to that already, though, holding a Twitter treasure hunt for their UK branch in 2014. They were working to promote the newest Smartphone in the teen and young adult age bracket, and decided to give away 25 pairs of VIP tickets to concerts at the LG Arena. The company set up a booth in various spots around UK cities, and posted a map on their Web site.
As their followers tweeted #LGtickethunter, which became a Twitter Promoted Trend, the map would gradually zoom in to the exact location of the tickets. They also gave away tickets to random users who tweeted using #LGtickethunter during the competition.
- This strategy brought in more than 5,000 tweets on the first day.
- They wound up with more than 50,000 tweets by the end of the promotion.
- The campaign found an impressive 38 percent engagement rate.
2. Get People Talking
Another phone company, Verizon, ran commercials with the Twitter handles of three FiOS (Fiber Optic Service) users, inviting prospective clients to Tweet the users their questions about the 2013 release of the operating system.
While the questions ran from the mundane details about the program to wildly off-topic, sometimes racy, themes, the campaign was highly successful in getting followers talking.
Followers who asked questions found real Verizon FiOS users who gave real answers to their questions.
- They linked current customers and prospective customers.
- This allowed them to share their experiences through word of mouth.
- The result provided an excellent way to interact — engaging with each other, and, ultimately, with Verizon.
3. Use Your Wit
Taco Bell regularly appears at the top of lists about companies winning on their Twitter engagement. The company’s Twitter team works to create an environment that relates well with their followers, creating witty tweets and videos, participating in virtual throw-downs, and bonding with celebrities and top influencers over nachos, quesadillas, and tacos.
When emojis came to Twitter, Taco Bell created the Taco Emoji Engine, a compilation of more than 600 images and GIFs that combined the new taco emoji, released in 2015, with another emoji.
- Followers tweeted @TacoBell, followed by the taco emoji, a plus sign, and another emoji of their choice.
- They were then rewarded with combinations of tacos with sunglasses, tacos and sushi, and tacos powering up with mushrooms, among other combinations.
- Only available on Twitter, the #TacoEmojiEngine became a popular hashtag.
4. Campaign Online— and IRL
PwC — Pricewaterhouse Coopers — created a 2016 campaign about the ballot box, which traveled around the country on its way to Hollywood for the February Oscar Awards Ceremony. The company created an integrated campaign that pulled in all of their social media sites, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. The briefcase was given a personality, made celebrity appearances, and played a large part in repositioning the brand.
- After creating Twitter icons as part of the campaign, PwC increased their potential impressions on the that site alone by 136x when compared to their Oscar campaigns without the briefcase.
- In the first three weeks, they saw 1,062 Twitter mentions, giving them 12.3 million impressions.
- Because of this success, PwC won the 2016 Shorty award in the business-to-business category for the Best of Social Media.
5. Build Buzz for Brand Awareness
Super Bowl Sunday is one of the biggest commercial release days of the year, with millions tuning in not only to see which team is the victor, but to watch the advertisements between plays. Volvo, a brand that the company says tends to be forgotten, chose to take advantage of the audience potential and show how much they care about their customers. Volvo won a 2016 Shorty for the auto division in the integration with live television category for their work.
The campaign went like this: During another company’s car commercial, Twitter users had to tweet with #VolvoContent to nominate someone they cared about to win one of five new Volvo XC60s. The company promoted their activity and tweets in the weeks leading up to the contest and during the game.
- As a result, Volvo got more than 230 million earned media impressions, with a marketing value of more than $44 million.
- There were more than 55,000 tweets sent during the three-hour show.
- #VolvoContest was the most-tweeted auto hashtag on Super Bowl Sunday.
- They had a 54 percent completion rate of the nominating form, and saw numerous people join Twitter for the sole reason of entering the content.
Twitter Take-Aways
There is much to be learned from these successful campaigns. All of the companies found fun and creative ways to rally their active Twitter users around their brands.
- Integrate your platforms: While each company saw tremendous positive results in their Twitter feed, they did more than just focus on Twitter. Whether they pulled in other social media platforms, incorporated print and television advertising, or featured their product and campaign elsewhere, companies looking to engage their Twitter users should consider bringing the campaign on more than one social networking site.
- Be responsive: Part of Taco Bell’s tremendous Twitter success comes from the company’s high response rate to their followers. They count numerous celebrities and influencers among their fans, but take the time to respond to tweets and retweets from anyone, whether they are members of the general public, other businesses, competitors, and famous followers. As you look for ways to engage your active Twitter followers, don’t forget to talk to them.
- Be strategic: None of these large-scale campaigns kicked off after a brief discussion. It took months of planning and preparing. Companies developed their ideal audience, prepared supportive materials like posters, videos, and scheduled tweets, and worked with teams of professionals. That’s similar to what we do — at WPamplify, we use demographic mapping to define your target audience, and then combine a thoughtful, planned Twitter and blogging integration that increases your Website traffic and online visibility.
Start Today: 6 Easy Steps to Improve Engagement
- Be real: Show your brand’s personality. If your company produces whimsical, fun television commercials, show that same side on Twitter. Use real pictures, rather than stock images, and be relatable to your followers.
- Be consistent: Social media — especially fast-moving Twitter — can create a sense of out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Schedule your tweets thoughtfully, rather than bombarding your followers with a slew of them all at once. You should tweet at least once a day; as you become more comfortable with the platform, increase your tweets a little more.
- Curate content: You don’t have to be the creator of each tweet or piece of information you publish. Share your blog and information, but also give your followers relevant pieces of information and copy from other reliable, credible sources. From recipes and how-tos to studies and interviews, become a resource for your followers.
- Ask for answers: Ask your followers questions. They can be thought-provoking and profound, or fun and whimsical. Either way, questions open the doors for a conversation with your followers. Twitter also allows users to create polls, a feature introduced in late 2015.
- Re-tweet yourself: Twitter has an extremely fast-moving news feed. Your content can get lost quickly, especially for followers in other time zones. Once you’ve found an engaging topic, schedule the same or similar content at different times on different days. You stand a greater chance of being seen.
- Know your audience: Focus on your followers and give them content they find interesting. They won’t engage with content that doesn’t speak to them, so use Twitter wisely and meet their specific interests and needs.
At WPamplify, we focus on helping you find your target audience through our revolutionary demographic mapping process. Our skilled professionals will help you engage your Twitter followers, increase your Web traffic, and develop new leads. Contact us today for more information.
