Monday, March 21, 2011

Twitter how-to: Coca-Cola

So, in my last post I gave a few examples on how NOT to behave on Twitter if you're trying to market your company. But why be so negative? Let's look at someone who's actually doing a good job and maybe we can learn how to do it right instead.

The Coca-Cola Company is one of the most active product brands on Twitter, with 24.849 tweets posted as this is being written. What I think they're doing really well is how they connect to their customers on a personal, cheerful and friendly level. They answer to people's posts about them and tries to follow everyone who follows them.

Here are two examples of how Coca-Cola writes their tweets:

Hard to think this is how they usually respond to customers' letters, emails and phone calls, right? And that is the beauty of Twitter! Since you only have 140 characters, there's no room for bureaucratic nonsense and long deliberations - just answer back to the customers with the same language they're using. That includes smileys, abbreviations and "internet slang" (e.g. LOL or brb), show your customers that your following the trends, not lagging behind.

Another good thing is that Coca-Cola's Twitter page is multilingual, they also tweet in Spanish and Portuguese! This is sure to create lots of goodwill in big business countries like Spain, Brazil, Mexico and USA where these languages are the first or second ones used.

"It makes us happy that Coca-Cola is that important to you. Your tweet was beautiful!"

Okay, but is everything just perfect about Coca-Cola's Twitter page?
Well, no, there's always room for improvement! The company is answering an enormous amount of customers, which means they're tweeting multiple times every day (at least 50 tweets per day) = you almost drown in their tweets! If they now decide to release a huge story about a new flavor or maybe a really exciting collaboration, it might just disappear among all the greetings, thanks and heys. You lose the "breaking news" factor if you're overusing your account. Chill a little bit, alright?

I think we're starting to get the hang of it now. Twitter is fun! :)

1 comment:

  1. Great example! Have to pick up this story in class :)

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