The Evolution of Brand Twitter
Twitter’s user base has exploded in the past ten years, going from under 50 million users in 2010 to over 335 million users in 2018. With such expansion companies have seen and utilized the opportunity to use the platform to help build their brand and market to an audience who is no longer viewing commercials on TV, but going straight to their Twitter feed when they get bored.
While it seems like almost every brand who succeeds on Twitter is going full weird-meme mode with their content, it wasn’t always the case. And some brands still haven’t taken a full jump to begin to use their account as a marketing technique (rather they use the content they post to market). I’ll simply call this “Brand Twitter” and by the most easy-to-understand definition I’ll explain what it is like this: Brand Twitter is more or less the utilization of an account by a brand to create an image through all of their Tweets to make them more appealing rather than using the platform to market new products/services first. Once they gain their personality they use the voice they have created to market new products and services. What I mean by that is that brands will take on a personality of their own through their accounts. Instead of being the same old boring companies saying “come try out new burger it is good!” an account will instead send out a barrage of funny, relatable tweets (some about their product, some not) in an effort to gain an audience, engagement from that audience, and then (since they have become like-able and deemed funny and personable by their followers) can market that new burger in a more organic, less robotic way.
As I said earlier, Brand Twitter didn’t always exist. Brands on Twitter used to be bland, boring, and full of actual, in-your-face ads. That all changed in 2017 when Wendy’s began its social media crusade. The company went from being fit and formal on Twitter to bringing on a new social team and letting them run wild. The result? Countless roasts of McDonald’s (and tons of interactions with fans of the account. This move made Wendy’s less of a big brand, and more of a relatable person in some sense. People would Tweet Wendy’s and they would reply. Most famously was when a kid asked how many retweets he needed for free nuggets for a year. They replied with 18 Million. He didn’t hit the goal, but Wendy’s gave it to him anyway. Why? Because the mere existence of the whole ordeal was huge for getting eyes on the company. Countless Twitter accounts were made in hopes to get Carter his nuggets, and the more and more the story spread, the more eyes were put onto Wendy’s. Giving their brand a real personality on Twitter helped them jump Burger King as and jump into the #3 spot in fast-food market in the US behind McDonald’s and Subway.
Since Wendy’s Twitter strategy paid off (the account has grown from under 1.5 million followers in 2017 to over 3.1 million today) dang, doubled their numbers in a couple years…. other brands jumped in. This is where we can jump in and analyze the current state of marketing on social media and try to predict the future.
Since Wendy’s blew up and began making waves as THE Brand Twitter account, almost every other brand trying to reach the 18–24 demographic has followed suit. Since engagement seems to be so high, and the boost in Wendy’s status in the American fast-food game have proven the strategy works it’s almost impossible for other companies not to try and catch some of the revenue. Think of the first company to advertise on the radio or TV, eventually EVERYONE started doing the same thing. Brands like Burger King, Natural Lite, Bud Light, Little Debbie, Moonpie, Pop-Tarts, SunnyD, Steak-umm, Netflix, KFC all have done similar things to their social feeds and the list goes on and on and on. Even some local Police Departments are hoping on this new wave of marketing. The key takeaway from this shift of marketing is that it clearly works, if it didn’t so many of these brands wouldn’t be flipping their social marketing teams on their heads, and moving towards this trend of making their accounts relatable to the crowd they’re trying to reach.
With the future of the internet looking to turn more and more towards social media with the growth of Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, and the increase in marketing and advertising through these platforms increasing as a result, it seems like a no brainer for companies to try and stand out from the pack. Brand Twitter seems to be the here and now of the social marketing, but what will the next 10 years hold? It’s tough to say, but as trends go it seems Brand Twitter will be oversaturated and over played in the next decade — leading brands to continue to stay ahead of the pack. As more and more social platforms pop up, and more brands get on these brands, the strategy will change and flow as the audience reacts on each platform, but for now, brands will continue to run their pages like meme accounts — and it seems to be working.
