Twitter Talk Mad Recap

Twitter Talk, our third segment in the Social Media Madness series was a success highlighting social media tips, trends and amazing campaigns.

Twitter is a global social networking platform for sharing content and is also used as a search engine where users source and find content in the form of images, text and video. Creating tweets to a 140 character limit, often complete with hashtags, is a craft, along with choosing the best timing for your tweets. The generations of users in this social media era demand transparency, so be genuine when posting or engaging with others online.  

Companies Take to Twitter to Build Brands

Education and Awareness

CondomTO, Public Health Toronto

#KWawesome, Kitchener/Waterloo Community 

The #KWawesome hashtag has been elevated to its own unique brand and is used to unite profiles, conversations, images and tweets made by those around the region. One can search this hashtag to find out what's going on in the community, the latest restaurant opening and follow conversations concerning the local community. 

#hollabackPhilly, Feminist Public Works

Feminist Public Works created this campaign on a low budget to create awareness about street harassment. The campaign aimed to create buzz and conversation surrounding the sexual harassment, which occurs daily on the streets.  The message the campaign delivers works to change people's perceptions and behaviour in accepting street harassment as a social norm, either as a witness or a victim. 

Brand Building and Digital Engagement 

#wetheNorth, Toronto Raptors

The Toronto Raptors have a massive fan following which has elevated this hashtag into its own brand, complete with its own clothing line, apparel, promotional products and a national following uniting Twitter users across the country.   

Oreo  

The Oreo brand is colourful and playful. The Oreo social media team is extremely engaging with their customers, as well as other companies.  Check out the playful banter between Oreo and Honda here). By replying to mentions, sharing recipes and suggesting their products to celebrities, Oreo has amassed a following by simply being a fun brand to follow.

Super Bowl, Doritos 

Doritos created anticipation for the Super Bowl and a buzz around their brand by asking customers to create a commercial.   Consumers were asked to express their creativity by incorporating Doritos into their Super Bowl Sunday, in order to receive a prize of $50,000 - who wouldn't buy a few bags or Doritos for a chance to win?!  The winning commercial created both buzz and controversy for both the winner and the brand.  Check it out!

Peyton Manning, Budweiser

Peyton provided a perfect example of why being authentic is important in today's social media era.  When Peyton declared after his Super Bowl win he wanted to be with "family, friends, and a lot of beer...Budweiser to be exact", the social media highways lit up with criticism of him 'selling out' his big moment to a beer company with a paid endorsement.  Budweiser claims it never paid the superstar for the name drop, but social media users have already declared the brand and its star, guilty as charged.   

Geo-targeting 

Volkswagen, Twitter Zoom 

In order to build a buzz around the new car, tickets to massive music fest were placed around Sao Paulo. A page was designed with a map of the city and followers had to tweet #foxatplanetaterra in order to have the map zoom in closer to the location of the tickets.  This competition was four days long but the hashtag only took only two hours to start trending in this South American city.  The pace of tweets was extraordinary and people were breathless after running to find the location - the first one to arrive wins the tickets! 

#LGtickethunter, LG (Live Good)

In a similar social media game play, the LG social audience had to keep tweeting and spreading the hashtag in order to receive hints about the location of the tickets. Similarly, the more tweets, the closer the zoom on the map would go to the location of the tickets. This campaign went viral and received over five thousand tweets the first day.

Corporation Social Responsibility & Building Awareness

#AskanAngel, Victoria Secret 

The Victoria Secret brand stays current with holiday themes. The brand creates anticipation surrounding new items, and by having certain times the audience can tweet to #askanAngel questions regarding their lives or what life is like working for the brand. 

#fairtweet, Ben & Jerry's

Ben & Jerry's switched to fair trade products, and to spread the word and build awareness, the company created a fair trade social media experience.  The technology created, worked by allowing users to use leftover characters from tweets which didn't reach 140 characters, to create a short link, and automatically adding a message about fair trade products.  This link informed the audience and all followers of the benefits of being a fair trade brand. The fair trade message spread to over 100,000 followers and over 500,000 'fair trade characters' where used. 

#youdrive, Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes turned to Twitter to help promote their new car, along with the new X-Factor. Mercerdes encouraged its followers to "choose their own adventure" by sharing a car chase clip trailer online, and giving followers the power to direct the movie, and decide what happens next.  The savvy social media move generated buzz around the brand by this gamificiation experience which delighted consumers.  

Too fast to Follow, Fiat

Fiat took a very creative and different approach to Twitter by using a bit of 'sassy' humour.  The claim was their car was 'too fast to follow', blocking any followers who tried to engage with them, and keeping their followers at zero. 

Customer Relationship Management 

Delta Airlines

Delta airlines has a team of employees tweeting about delays, cancelations, lost luggage, as well as replying to customer complaints and concerns - different departments handle different requests. Providing real-time customer service eliminates the dreaded wait for customer service on the phone. 

WestJet, Christmas Campaign 

​Widely known and appreciated for their Christmas campaigns and generous giving, WestJet creates anticipation of what's coming next.  The engagement on social media displays how they go above and beyond for their customers, and are always exploring how they can create more excitement and fun for flyers.  For the 2015 Christmas campaign, WestJet encouraged real-time giving by use of #westjetChristmas to group the mini-miracles occurring around the globe. 

#Southwestheart, Southwest Airlines 

Southwest Airlines expresses genuine love and caring with their #Southwestheart following.  The company shares stories of how empathic and down to earth they are when it comes to caring about their customers. By sharing emotional stories which resonate with viewers, Southwest is able to create compelling and emotional customer care stories by capturing real life experiences in the airport. 

Twitter Terms

• bit.ly - link management service established in 2008 that shortens over six millions links a month
• Buffer - scheduling application that works with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (free and paid accounts)
• DM - direct messaging only available when two users follow each other.  DM is used to connect with people outside of the public feed to address complaints, gain more information or communicate privately with an individual Twitter user. 
• Favourite - a form of approval and a way to express thanks.  A favourite let’s others know you are aware of their mention.  If you favourite content, it also collects in your ‘favourites’ on your Twitter dashboard panel, which means you can come back and reference or find these tweets later
• Followers - the maximum following limit is 5000.  There is also a ratio for the number of people you follow vs. those that follow you.  Twitter will cap and limit others from following you if your ratio is not aligned with the amount of followers on your account.  If you are capped off and blocked from following new people, you can unfollow stale accounts to allow more room for new, more engaged followers or work to organically grow and build up your followers, to then be allowed to follow more people. 
• Hashtag / # - turns any word or group of words into searchable content and is good for searching a topic or following a trending discussion
• Lists - used to filter, or follow specific information and / or groups. One may compile a list of competitors or speakers for event, as well these lists may be public or private to your audience
• Mention / @ - message / form of engagement, used to show support, bring attention to or speak directly to another Twitter member
• Periscope - live video streaming app
• Pinned Tweet - pinned to the top of your page and gets maximum exposure.  This can be used for an event promotion or message for which you want to draw attention.   
• RT (retweet) - when someone shares your content to their followers, or when you share another’s content to your own audience
• MT (modified tweet) - when a tweet is modified and shared to followers
• Video - can be uploaded or shared live  

Advertising 

There are a variety of ads available for account users to take advantage of in order to promote their products and services. One is able to target these ads to a specific audience (gender, geography or age). By focusing on a targeted audience, one is able to strengthen their reach and/or measure their metrics. 

Engagement - share relevant content with your followers and considered 'pinning' tweets to the top of your page to promote/advertise something specific (this places the best content in front of your audience increasing awareness or bringing attention to certain content)

Website Click Conversions - use this to drive the scale, reach and performance of a campaign (you only pay for links clicked and an algorithm optimizes for link clicks)

App Installs - use to plan out scheduled tweets or have exclusive offers (available only through Twitter)

Leads - can use Twitter to gather information on potential customers (can pay for service to track)

Geo-targeting - location based targeting that has ability to reach national market

Quick Promote - drives interaction and engagements with a few clicks (promoted tweets appear in targets timeline) 

Mad Takeaways

• This Twitter Talk Session reminded account users to be honest, transparent and prepared each time they share a tweet - as news spreads like lightning and information isn't retractable even when deleted (thanks to screen grabs and share functions), so be mindful of tones, spelling and posting appropriate content.
• We reviewed many company profiles, and how they've built their brand by engaging with their customers though there are policies surrounding liability and permissions of the extent of employee engagement encouraged and allowed (ie. Southwest employee leaving work to bring customer running bag). By encouraging employees to make the best decisions in the moment (ie. satisfying the customer being the most important goal) without considering limitations or being penalized for acting/responding in the moment). Perhaps training employees on good judgment and no judgment would be appropriate before encouraging this type of action)
• Westjet Christmas Campaigns really show us how the company goes out out of their way to engage with their customers and create a buzz around the brand (they also have kid free cabins). Disney also goes out if its way to bring a buzz to the brand by ‘sprinkling guests with Pixie dust’ (a random free upgrade to a suite when available). Doing great things like this for customers really brings awareness to the brand due to world of mouth story sharing that occurs when they retell their experience.
• If you find time-management of social to be a problem, consider hiring a student to contribute to tweeting from your account, or managing your social and content (they are eager and available).