Most companies on Twitter see it as a marketing tool. They want their brand to reach as many people as possible, and convince them to become customers. But there are better ways of doing this than endlessly plugging a product with repetitive, boring tweets.
Every great brand account on Twitter has a person behind it, and the people behind these five accounts have come up with creative ways to entertain their Twitter followers:
1) Arena Flowers // 10,204 followers
Rarely, if ever, does Arena Flowers push followers to head over to its website to order flowers. The person behind it (who is apparently named Ed Ross) posts strange and frequently hilarious one-liners, like a timely tweet about being “trapped inside the Olympic spirit.” The decision to run with such an approach was taken because people weren’t interested in tweets about flowers, according to the company’s Will Wynne.
“Jurassic Park is basically a film about an under-staffed IT department.” — Feb. 18, 2012
“WARNING: Never try to diffuse an argument with your wife by writing Ctrl, Alt and Del on her face and then pressing them really hard.” — Dec. 9, 2011
2) Betfairpoker // 19,954 followers
It is this account from which Arena Flowers took its inspiration. It’s been around almost four years and over the course of almost 18,000 tweets, it’s beguiled and entertained thousands of followers. Similar to the account it spawned, there’s little in the way of traditional brand promotion. It’s all about being funny, with a fairly strong British slant.
“The Olympics isn’t about winning gold. It’s not about glory or fame. It’s not even about taking part. It’s about crabs. Crabs. Crabs. Crabs.” — Jul. 27, 2012
“Just finished babyproofing my house. I must have spent over £10,000 on barbed wire alone, but there’s no way a baby is getting in now.” — Jan 15, 2011
3) Taco Bell // 227,094 followers
A little more pushy than others on this list when it comes to promoting the brand message, Taco Bell is nonetheless very funny. Case in point: the Twitter spat with Old Spice earlier this month, wherein those behind the two brands poked fun at each other.
“@OldSpice Is your deodorant made with really old spices?” — July 9, 2012
4) Old Spice // 216,141 followers
It hardly seems fair to leave out the other half of the aforementioned Twitter war, especially because Old Spice is even better than Taco Bell. The account keeps true to the type of ads it’s been running over the last couple of years: masculine in tone and certainly funny.
“Tried on a shirt for the first time today. My apologies to all the ladies in a 10-mile radius that burst into spontaneous tears.” — Sep. 2, 2011
“Guys, give her a gift you made yourself. Simply rip the metal siding off your house and forge her a motorcycle with your bare hands.” — Dec. 21, 2010
5) Kia UK // 1,313 followers
This one’s a little different. The tweets on this fairly new account are allegedly posted by the company’s new Cee’d car itself. The jokes are very much of the cornball variety, but we’ll admit it: we laughed more than once.
“I just travelled north on an ancient Roman road. Straight up!” — July 15, 2012
“I’m still excited about my holiday next week. Personally I’d like to go to Rhodes, cars like Rhodes.” — July 27, 2012
Photo via Twitter