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How to tweet effectively: Tips from Will.I.Am and Taco Bell

13 June 2013

Gary Stringer is the Digital Marketing Manager of AccuraCast, a Digital Marketing Agency focussed on web traffic and customer engage engagement.

People ask me a lot, how can I tweet effectively and what are your best tips for using twitter?

Social media campaigns can be extremely hard to implement successfully. However, some recent social initiatives have caught my eye and this is because they demonstrate how to use these marketing channels effectively.

Will.I.Am tweet tips

Will.I.Am’s recent use of social channels in the promotion of his latest album has been impressive, with the talented rapper/producer demonstrating an awareness of how to tweet effectively – and how to use multiple social platforms in tandem. A key part of this has come from Will.I.Am’s presence and influence on Twitter, which has risen since he began tweeting during the live shows of 2012’s The Voice.

Will.I.Am tweetsWill.I.Am named his latest album #willpower and the engagement from his fans has seen that hashtag trend on a global scale, a number of times. This is an interesting approach and could certainly be used by other brands with a strong Twitter or Google+ presence.

A #willpowerhangout on Google+, also featuring Britney Spears, Nicole Scherzinger and Miley Cyrus, helped generate excitement and awareness prior to the album launch.

Another social campaign that I thought was creative and extremely effective was a recent effort from Taco Bell, incorporating Twitter and Snapchat. For those who are unfamiliar with Snapchat, it is a photo sharing app for smartphones whose popularity has risen rapidly in the past few months.

Taco Bell chose to use Snapchat to make an announcement to their customers, revealing that they would do so via their Twitter profile. Using such a new app to reveal that they were re-launching their Beefy Crunch Burrito was a bold move, but one that appears to have been successful.

Ressie Lieberman, director of social and digital communications for Taco Bell, stated that they were “blown away” by the response they had received.

Taco Bell tweets

Taco Bell tweet

The lesson that both of these campaigns can teach us is that being bold can often lead to great engagement via social media. Incorporating hashtags into product names or slogans will inevitably lead to a greater number of comments on Twitter and Google+ and recognising the power of social media as a platform for making key announcements can enhance brand engagement, whilst also spreading the message far more rapidly than through traditional media.

Danielle Stagg

Written by Danielle Stagg