Wednesday 12 May 2010

Tweet® tweet© baby™

Do you use Twitter? Do you even like Twitter? If the answer is yes to both, here is one more – do you follow a brand on Twitter? If so, do you give a tweet about what they have to say or are you following them for a chance to RT for some goodies? Well, whatever the reason for following them, they will be relevant to you in some way – be it in personal interest or in that you find their tweets informative in a beneficial way.

Very few brands have managed to find a real useful… use for their brand to be on Twitter. We have the broadcast streams, the customer service streams, and the campaign streams, yet the majority simply seem to be tweeting sub 140 character editions of their Press Releases – #Zzz much? Frankly, most seem to focus too much on follower numbers than the importance of engagement - do you really want 100k followers who don’t give a crap about your brand or 10 that will advocate it? It’s no surprise that dang whale keeps making an appearance at the rate that new “dud” streams are appearing!

Some streams however, for me anyway, have hit the proverbial nail on that Twitter whale’s head – examples? Go on then, but I’m not going to mention the Habitats or Starbucks of the Twitterverse because I am sure you are already clued up to them (if not here’s some help -> http://tinyurl.com/34ld28d):

The Good - marvelvscapcom – With a dedicated cult following, this cross cultural gaming franchise has announced its long awaited third iteration. Capcom have set up an official Twitter stream for fans anticipating the games release, tweeting the latest news on the games, having Capcom cult game chatter and offering promotional competitions on their stream – it’s interesting, engaging, not spammy and tweets are clearly written by people with a passion for games and all things Capcom – it even looks the part too. Great stuff!

The Bad - marvelvscapcom – erm what?! Yes, well this is a great example of a brand using Twitter in a campaign by campaign manner – new streams for products from parent companies, in this case for a game by Capcom that appear all the time but are seldom supported past the products release or campaign conclusion. It’s a pity – if brands with multiple streams were able to engage followers on one stream, a community would be in the making. Sadly, examples such as this are akin to Google Wave Beta – nice entry, quick Buzz kill (yes I did). That said, time will tell whether this stream will remain active after the release of the game (I would still assume not after initial weeks of release… Bad times).

And as a Sugi bonus… The weird - national_grid:

Possibly the most logical and direct use of a Twitter stream I’ve seen from a brand – instant updates, pure information and completely relevant to what the company does – also downright boring for the most of us but it made me “lol”. I won’t describe what they tweet, you will have to look for yourself – suffice to say that if national rail provided a stream for train spotters, this is the format they should adopt (and if Ronseal tweeted like this, they would do their adverts of the 90s proud)!

I hope you all follow shitmydadsays, and oh yes, mine too! J #ftw etc.

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