Verizon’s Bold Tweet to Casey Neistat
This week’s digital marketing success story is about Verizon Wireless.
What Can We Learn From Verizon: A funny way to get free advertising.
Example: Verizon’s tweet in response to Casey Neistat’s question:
Like a cobra, Verizon strikes at the right moment with maximum effect.
Casey Neistat in Greater Detail
For those of you that do not know him, he creates videos and is known for storytelling on his YouTube channel. His channel has over a billion total video views due to 5.3 million YouTube subscribers, 1.7 million Instagram followers and 802,000 followers on Twitter.
He is a huge internet and social media influencer.
Why Was This Tweet Effective?
- It enhanced my view of Verizon as a brand (I laughed and thought it was clever).
- Probably got 75k — 100k views (conservative guess since Verizon and Casey combine for over 2.5 million Twitter followers), received 40 retweets and 122 likes.
- Reinforced a competitor’s flaw to a big audience (I’ve heard from multiple users that T-Mobile does not have great service).
There is no way to know how much business Verizon might have gotten or how much they hurt T-Mobile in one tweet. However, the result seems worth it.
How to Perform Verizon’s Tactical Twitter Strike
Verizon has a big social media presence and a large team. Out of necessity, they most likely uses expensive social media tools and have more manpower than most companies.
Smaller companies without social media teams can follow these steps:
- Monitor for competitor mentions with four free tools: Google Alerts, Social Mention, Twitter.com/search (thanks to Kendra Rutledge for pointing this one out to me) or a Hootsuite stream (instructions below).
- Identify and monitor influencer(s) Twitter activity with a Hootsuite stream (instructions below).
- When an influencer tweets about something related to your company or about your competitor, strike.
Finding influencers in your niche and influencer marketing is a big topic, I have not covered it before but have heard Buzzsumo is the best tool to find influencers.
Mark Schaefer does a good job explaining influencer marketing here.
Other Thoughts
Setup Hootsuite Twitter Stream for Competitor Mentions
- Step 1: From a computer, create Hootsuite account and add Twitter profile
- Step 2: On the dashboard, click add stream button near top left
- Step 3: Click Keyword from menu items
- Step 4: Enter up to three keyword phrases
- Step 5: Add one or two more phrases and Add Stream
Setup Hootsuite Twitter Stream to monitor Influencers
- Follow steps 1 and 2 above
- Step 3: Click lists from the menu items
- Step 4: Select your profile
- Step 5: Click create new list and label “Influencers”
- Step 6: Click Private List then click Add Stream
- Step 7: Click More Options by the new stream
- Step 8: Click Preferences
Step 9: Add influencers by their Twitter handle
- Step 10: Click Done
There might be a better way to monitor for competitor mentions or influencer activity, would love feedback on anything that should be added!
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I share social media basics and success stories, press the heart button if you also found Verizon’s tweet funny.
Even though I write this on every post, thanks for reading.
Big thanks to Carlos Gil for alerting me to this tweet!
Originally published at www.erp101.com on October 17, 2016.
