Twitter as a marketing tool
At the Social Media World Forum in London this week Bruce Daisley, the UK Twitter Director, gave an interesting presentation on how you can use Twitter as a marketing tool. One of the things he focused on is the tone of voice that works for brands.
The tone of voice triangle
Many brands seem to think there is only one tone of voice that really works on Twitter: fun and light-hearted. This is definitely not the case. There are actually three tones of voice that you can use and combine. Daisley talks about the tone of voice triangle: fun, help and info.
He believes you should choose two of these for your own brand. Personally I feel like a mixture of all three is good as well. This is at least how we do it at Engagor. We post informative content on Twitter in the form of tips and blog posts. We also use Twitter for customer service, offering our users help whenever they have questions. Finally we also post fun content from time to time, mostly related to the team and our company. Come to think of it, we mainly share information and offer help through Twitter.
Some good practices
Daisley uses three brands to to illustrate how you can work with these three tones of voice.
- Samsung focuses on the informative tone of voice and this works great for them. They share interesting information on their products, to educate and help their followers.
- Innocent Drinks is really good at the light-hearted tone of voice.
- And finally there's telecom operator 02 that goes for a combination of help and fun. You should just scroll to the replies they give their followers: it never gets boring.
Key takeaway: being on Twitter as a brand does not mean you have to act funny all the time. The important thing is that you are true to your brand's identity and that you share content your followers are interested in. Good luck!