Twitter might feel like a veteran social media platform these days, but it's still core to any marketing push. Twitter has 211 million active users, and because of its structure, it allows brands to get their marketing pitches out quickly.
Brands have to get creative to stand out on such a fast-paced platform.
Right now, Twitter's relationship to product sales is complicated. In the aggregate, when Twitter users talk about your product, it does have a tangible impact on sales.
Twitter says that every 10% increase in the number of tweets about your product translates into a 3% increase in sales.
But on Twitter, it's hard to gain a lot of traction with just one or two posts. Even a great post on Twitter will likely not receive engagement from more than 0.5% of your followers. By contrast, the average engagement rate for U.S. influencers on TikTok was 17.99%.
That's why brands have taken a bigger-picture approach to Twitter. Rather than selling products directly, brands use Twitter to build up their reputation, showcase their employees, and develop a sense of humor.
Here are some creative ways brands can use Twitter support to provide an engaging customer experience:
Threads make Twitter an excellent medium for in-depth storytelling, and many brands have embraced threading as a way to discuss a more significant issue that ties back to their product.
One of the most prolific examples of this is the skincare brand Topicals, which whips up Twitter threads that explain the ins and outs of caring for your skin. Sometimes, it uses Twitter to go deep on certain skin conditions.
A multi-part thread on pseudofolliculitis barbae garnered many likes and retweets on the platform, and on one day in 2020, Twitter accounted for 70% of Topical's Shopify sales.
Twitter has given rise to a genre of brands that tweet like comedians.
They depart from typically formal or buttoned-up messaging to complain about their wifi or stage online fights with other brands, like when Wendy's called out McDonald's for using frozen beef in its burgers.
One of the most famous brands on Twitter is MoonPie. The dessert snack brand tunes to new online memes, and it always injects a jokey reference to MoonPie.
When the CDC changed its COVID isolation rules, MoonPie was quick to the punch: "I think the CDC said you can dip a MoonPie in something strong and just try to forget this year ever happened," it wrote.
The brand has become so popular online that it recently launched its line of ironic Christmas sweaters.
The ice cream bar maker Klondike is a prolific promoter of branded contests on Twitter.
At the start of the new year, the brand posted a T.V. ad—with vintage visuals—that encouraged followers to call into a hotline and share their New Year's resolutions to win a year's supply of Klondike bars.
In another tweet, the company posted the lyrics to a popular TikTok song and turned it into a reference to its #4aKlondike challenge, which asks its followers to explain what they would do for a Klondike.
Just as restaurant-goers might ask their waiter for dinner recommendations, customers want help choosing between products. Warby Parker is a regular provider of this type of advice on Twitter.
When a Twitter user asks Warby Parker to help them choose between two pairs of glasses, Warby Parker always weighs in.
Twitter has become a central hub of customer care for airlines in particular. Because Twitter moves so quickly, passengers can tweet at or direct message (D.M.) airlines with their last-minute questions and usually receive quick responses—typically in less than an hour.
But that same speed also lends itself well to a large cross-section of brands: everyone from ClassPass to UPS regularly fields customer inquiries on the app.
Suppose you need help creating a similar system for your brand. In that case, Chatdesk Teams provides flexible customer service teams that respond to your customers' replies or D.M.s, even brand mentions in general.
Customer FAQs are answered in real-time by a real person, resulting in genuinely human and efficient service.
While the brief popularity of the audio-only social platform Clubhouse seems to have faded, Twitter Spaces has successfully taken up the mantle. Big brands like the NBA have already flocked to the platform.
Twitter Spaces launched officially in May 2021. Twitter Spaces events can be scheduled in advance, and when users express interest in Spaces, Twitter will remind them when the event is about to happen.
Twitter features Spaces as a space for brands, and the platform's push for it seems to be working. According to research from Hubspot, 79% of brands are interested in investing more heavily in Twitter Spaces in 2022.
Many companies—and even small businesses—are using it to highlight their employees more prominently as part of a bid to humanize the brand.
The fintech company Cowrywise hosts a series on Twitter Spaces called "Backstage with Cowrywise," It interviews executives and product managers at the company.
Other activities might include hosting moderated talks or "after-party" following major events, like the Comic-Con after-party that Jack-in-the-Box hosted on Discord in 2021.
