Twitter turned five earlier this week. To celebrate, it released a celebrity-stuffed video praising the uses of the social network that seemingly overnight is more powerful than we could have ever imagined. The birthday, as The New York Times pointed out, happened to fall on World Poetry Day. With the age of twitterature upon us and the recognition of real life legitimacy for the platform, we’re wondering: How can we elevate our Twitter marketing messages to inspiring heights?
Look around your Twitter feed. Surely you’ll notice trends. The most prominent is a Twitter formula we like to call “Your Tweeting Heart” wherein Twitter users try desperately to display a soul by tweeting “deep” quotes, followed by a heartfelt reflection about a current event or charity, and then blasted with a final shot of self-promotion/optimism (dusted with exclamation points, natch). While there’s nothing wrong with this tweet routine, after about the billionth tweet it’s difficult to take the sincerity seriously. So what do we do instead?
First of all… instead of trying to be blunt or trying to be profound or trying to be a master of self-promotion, we think the more artful solution is to simply be ourselves. Tweeting about our lives and businesses and blogs with the genuine excitement or humor or whatever we actually feel for them reads authentic – wait for it – because it is. It’s difficult in marketing on Twitter to not fall into the robo-tweet trap, however. Pounding a bunch of meticulously planned messages designed to check off our demographic boxes, sticking them in Tweet Deck and never looking back is a tempting proposition, indeed. But retweets and bounce backs to your website happen with good content, not with good programming. We’ve seen a lot of brands lately really rise to the challenge of artistic tweeting. FedEx, for example, routinely uses the site to help tweeps find lost packages, while Ben & Jerry’s tweet poetically about the inner-workings of their company.
So, readers, what say you? Has Twitter evolved into a more thoughtful and literate marketing channel? Or is it still a silly fad that renders few results? Sound off below!
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