Have a Personality on Twitter

Twitter is a social media site that allows you to send out messages (tweets) to people who subscribe to you (followers). Your tweets can include a link to any web content, photograph or video. If a picture is worth a thousand words, adding an image to a tweet greatly expands what you can share. In general, you want to find the sweet spot between what your target audience wants to hear and things that promote your business.

For many businesses, the answer is to focus on how your products and services benefit your customers. For other businesses, a great strategy has been to give the business a personality through the content that is tweeted. It has been successful for for many companies to interact with their customers on Twitter, and the personalization of a business Twitter account can increase overall customer satisfaction and their experience with the business.

Here are some examples of real tweets that exemplify personality:

In this tweet, Netflix takes a humorous approach towards the release of Eminem’s movie 8 Mile on the streaming service. They tied in iconic lyrics from his famous song “Lose Yourself” into the tweet, and so when Netflix followers read the tweet, it instantly reminds them of Eminem and his legacy in a memorable way.

Taco Bell has a great twitter presence and following because of how interactive they are with their customers. Less than 20% of their tweets are promoting their products, so more than 80% of their tweets are interactions with customers and other businesses. You can see in these examples how Taco Bell forgets that it’s a business and tweets like if it were an actual person with feelings. They have funny tweets, like the one where they ask for a DNA tests after a customer tweets about Taco Bell giving them a “food baby”. Taco Bell also replies to another business that no, they have no plans for prom… obviously an inanimate business can’t be attending a prom but it’s funny how they act like a person. They even compliment their customers on random things that might not even relate to food.

Businesses can also give themselves a better personality on Twitter by posting about news and subjects that matter to their target market. Patagonia customers tend to have an interest in the safety of the environment and the animals that live in it. Instead of just posting pictures of this year’s new backpack that they’re selling, Patagonia post about political policies that negatively affect the environment so that their customers gain awareness of the matter. This builds the relationship between consumer and business because they have something in common that they are passionate for.