Twitter FAIL – What a great tool for marketing…..not for some!

Twitter has rapidly progressed into one of the top networks for informing followers of your activities. The service is so sufficient that many of the major brands have set up accounts to ensure maximum exposure is secured.

Events, promotions, up-to-date news and competitions are all services that can be advertised through tweeting. As a relatively simple application and with numerous possibilities to promote your services, why then do some of the World's largest brands fail to capitalise on this or even have an account!?

Scouting through the various fashion designers on Twitter, I am amazed to find that barely any of these massive brands successfully enlighten their fans though social media.

Take G-Star for example. They have successfully promoted themselves on Facebook, but remain unknown on Twitter! As one of the fastest growing brands, I would have thought an essential element of their promotional campaign would be focused online?

Another poor example of brand promotion on Twitter is DKNY. Promoted through a ‘PR girl' in New York, the profile is updated regularly but through a personal voice rather than the brand's.

Brands have to recognise the balance between personal and corporate. Companies need to portray character within their identity, but at the same time maintain professionalism. DKNY offers no links or incentives to visit their site within their tweets, therefore neglect the promotion potential on offer. (Paul Smith is a good example of combining personal with business)

Amazingly despite only 6 tweets in 5 months, Abercrombie NY have established 6,067 followers to date. Their most recent, ‘Check out our cool new stuff for back to school', back on 11th July. However, none of the tweets contain links back to their site, ultimately dismissing the prospect of encouraging customers back to their online store.

On the flip side, not all designers have it wrong!

Ted Baker are one of the first designers I found on Twitter who seem to have it right. Links to their website and blog to reveal promotional offers and sales are spot on. They also run regular competition notifications to influence their followers to become more involved in their brand.

They also reveal promotional codes and sale nights in stores to conveniently inform their customers of ongoing deals and provide extra incentives for them to spend money on their products.

Paul Smith is another great example of productive Twitter use. Their account is combined with their Facebook page, acting as an easy method to notify their followers on both sites at the same time.

Their profile is structured in the format of individual promotion from designer Paul Smith himself. With links to his personal blogs, his updates also encourage subscription to their newsletters, and encouragement to visit stores and buy their products.

One of my favourite tweet profiles from the fashion designers is Lacoste. As I write this post their current update states, ‘Baby it's cold outside! Warm up with the newest women's outerwear from Lacoste.' What a perfect example of how to sell your product to your customers.

The update is related to the winter season, has a personal yet selling tone and encourages followers to click the link and explore their winter coats on sale.

Their profile is consistent with quality updates and also includes competitions and savings around their stores, along with event notifications that encourage customers to come and meet the people behind the scenes.

Another method tried is by Diesel, hosting a Twitter style spoof account on their own domain. An obvious fail to this approach is that this type of microblogging site is harder to find compared to Twitter site and therefore notifications are restricted and less effective.

So there you have it, some positive and very negative outcomes from Twitter. There are plenty more brands on the web who have been slow adjusting to optimising their social marketing. If they are unsure where to start, take tips from Lacoste's approach and increase brand awareness and customer engagement through relatively easy steps.

Below I have published some information regarding these fashion designer Twitter pages above. Notice how the positive brands have less tweets, but more followers in most cases. This goes to prove that quality posts over quantity is the way forward.

A few stats from the Twitter profiles mentioned;

G Star Raw: Followers N/A, Tweets N/A
DKNY: Followers 4869, Tweets 1452
Ted Baker: Followers 688, Tweets 78
Abercrombie NY: Followers 6069, Tweets 6
Paul Smith: Followers 5203, Tweets 171
Lacoste: Followers 5754, Tweets 469