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Till October 2019, an astonishing 6,000 tweets were sent every second. It means that people are actively sharing ideas, talking to people, and even sharing their reviews about a brand on Twitter.

85% of small businesses say that they use Twitter to provide customer service to their customers. If you are a startup, in the beginning, there are chances that you will struggle to generate ideas for your tweets. As you spend time on Twitter and observe your audience, you’ll learn what to tweet as a brand.

But the good news is that you don’t need to worry about this thing anymore. The reason why you started reading this blog is that you were out of ideas on what to tweet. And secondly, even if you are posting things, it means that there is no traffic on the website.

In the following text, you’ll get around some tried and tested ideas that will help you clear your mind and post something that users will love to read.

Promote Your Blog or Landing Page

If you are a business that publishes blog posts daily. There is a chance that each of these blogs won’t get enough coverage due to limited resources or lack of time. But with Twitter, there is a chance that you’ll be able to increase your reach when you tweet it.

A good thing about Twitter is that you can tweet the same tweet several times for different target markets according to their time zone.

Plus, there is so much room for evergreen content that can be retweeted for a different target market.

A similar thing happens with a landing page. For a landing page to reach more people, owners and marketers run PPC campaigns. Twitter with hashtags is an excellent tool to drive people with enticing content. One-liners can grab the attention of users who want to avail of your service. They want a little push, which can help them reach a potential customer.

Share Helpful Tips

Your aim as a marketer is to grab the attention of users and make them trust your brand. If you keep sharing spammy links, no customer will trust you.

To get yourself heard and unique, you must provide the users with some helpful tips regarding your product or the current trends in the market.

Another tip you can use to grab the attention of users is to take the current trend and add something valuable to the conversation.

Surely every brand is using Twitter or at least has an account on Twitter. The best thing you can do is to educate the users on your product.

Moreover, you can post quotes, valuable tips, and tricks from experts in your industry. This will help users in building trust in your brand, and they’ll surely come back for more.

Highlight Reviews

There is no surprise that 97% of customers believe that online reviews influence their buying decisions. 

When you get a review on Google or Facebook, don’t ever hesitate to show it on Twitter.

The good thing about Twitter is that there will be potential customers who can read reviews and make an impulsive buying decision.

And social proof has grown and been recognized in the past few years a lot. To gain trust in the customer or at times, you can even calm an angry customer on Twitter, where everyone can see how you are treating customers who are not satisfied with your service.

Announce Job Openings

If you are looking for a potential candidate, there is a good chance that you’ll get them on Twitter.

Additionally, you’ll be able to get much attention from people. Posting job openings gives the impression that you are a legit brand that is using Twitter to connect with real people.

If a customer is already following your brand, there is a good chance that they will be interested in working with you. When you post a job opening with a link, it will drive relevant people to your website.

Be Transparent

Studies show that consumers buy from a brand more quickly if they feel that the brand is being transparent.

On Twitter, you have a chance to stay true to your brand personality. When you admit that you made a mistake or even if you celebrate things on Twitter. It gives the impression that you are just like a regular brand.

Share BTS or “behind the scenes” videos on the making of your product and let the consumers enjoy the production of your product.

Upon doing this, consumers will be more interested in your brand. And they will be more curious when the product is near launch. If you include the consumer in the making process, the consumers establish a connection with the brand. This is a brand moment where you can leverage that connection and make the users feel safe while doing business with you.

Final Word

Whether you admit it or not, Twitter is a necessary tool for customers and audiences to interact easily with a brand and learn more about its values and goals.

Upon interacting with the users directly, a brand can easily understand the buying intentions of the consumers. If you are not active on Twitter, now is the chance to do so. And if you don’t have the expertise to do so, we can help you with our digital marketing services.

Hello and welcome to another special episode of Branex Talks. In today’s episode, we are going to interview a really special guest and a person who has been in the industry for more than 15 years. She has served in companies like Motorola, Citrix, and Brightstar Corp. and is currently the Head of the Global Internship Program at Microsoft. She is an amazing storyteller and has won the Peak Performer Award (2017, Microsoft), the Social Media Guru Award (2016, Social Tools Summit), and the Think Tank Marketing Award (2016, Microsoft). With immense pleasure and gratitude, we would like to welcome Miri Rodriguez to our blog.

Branex: Miri, thank you for taking out time for Branex. One of the most prominent things on your LinkedIn profile is that you have more than a hundred endorsements for marketing. How do you approach marketing and strategies?

MIRI: Hi there! Thank you so much for featuring me here. I’m honored and humbled! I have more than a hundred endorsements on LinkedIn. Hahaha, are you serious? That’s awfully kind of people! Now I need to go check who endorsed me and thank them!

I see marketing as a delicate tool to intrigue and entice audiences. It really is a delicate practice, it’s also constantly evolving, so strategies ought to be kept fresh and relevant since audiences, channels, markets, industries, and tools are ever-changing.

Branex: Storytelling is an art, and brands who focus on their storytelling tend to get more out of the audience, how do you describe good storytelling and how can brands and companies improve their storytelling?

MIRI: I often say that storytelling isn’t the mere telling of stories, but the careful design of a story's mission, characters, arc, structure, elements, and techniques. Good storytelling is about storyboards turning storywords into story worlds! Meaning, that every step of the design process is taken into consideration even before the story is created to ensure it lands well with the intended audiences.

Brands looking to improve their storytelling should move away from abused story structures such as “Hero’s Journey” and begin designing stories that consider their specific audiences. Not all stories need to have a hero or a happy ending, but all stories should evoke emotion from the audience so that they become memorable. Companies should begin their storytelling journey by asking themselves “Who is my audience and what emotion do I want to awaken from them with my story?”

Branex: Miri, you are an amazing storyteller. We want to know how one becomes a good storyteller. What are the small nuances you would recommend to take into consideration? What are the must-have standards? What extremely positive examples must be taken as inspiration?

MIRI: Ah! I don’t know about amazing but school, yes. Mastering storytelling is like every other skill set. Practice makes perfect. There is no right or wrong way to tell a story, but great storytellers will spend a significant amount of time chiseling away at the raw materials of the story (characters, plot, and conclusion) and allowing the stories to take the form of their own, characters to evolve themselves and alternate conclusions or story worlds to appear.

The art of storytelling consists of elegantly enabling the story to unfold once the story spine has been meticulously designed. That takes creativity, empathy, and imagination. The science of storytelling is ensuring the right elements are in the right places, and for that, you must try out different techniques until one works. I’m personally a fan of designing story prototypes (or concepts) and testing them with audiences instead of spending a lot of time and effort on big production stories. My tried and proven method has been using Design Thinking principles to craft stories as each step of this approach has forced me to become nimble, and more creative, but also calculating at the craft.

Branex: You are the Head of the Global Internship Program at Microsoft, with great speaking skills and many great honors under your belt. When you first started out, did you ever think you would reach there, and what drove you towards this great success? How did you overcome your obstacles?

MIRI: Oh gosh no. Never. If you were to have told my 20-year-old self that I’d be here decades later, she would have laughed at you! I think one of the biggest drivers in life is the notion that we need to leave a legacy for ourselves.

I constantly ask myself: what is my legacy?

What will people say when I’m gone?

How will I be remembered?

There was a time in my life when a title or a specific salary amount was a synonym for success to me. I later realized that success is actually multidimensional. So for me today, overall success means becoming the best version of me in the many areas and roles that I serve (wife, mother, sister, friend, worker, mentor). When you strive to leave a legacy of excellence within your own intersectionality, you have a great chance at being successful in life. Will there be obstacles? Haters? Setbacks? Detours? You better believe it.

How did I overcome them?

I didn’t. I watched them. I explored them. I accepted them. I learned from them and I kept going.

Persistence is the key to success. Many people start a new mission, goal, or New Year’s Resolution, but seldom do they get to see the finish line. Keep going. Finish what you started. Obstacles can be your biggest enablers on your road to success. It all depends on how you see them.

Branex: Being a marketing expert, what would you suggest to brands and startups who are facing difficulty with their digital and social media strategy?

MIRI: I see a lot of brands struggling with where they should have a social media presence (should the brand be on every channel?) and if they need to follow the newest trend in digital strategies (such as influencer marketing). My suggestion is to always think first about the customer/audience and their needs and not to get caught up on the sometimes fleeting digital landscape tendencies.

If your customer is not on Snapchat, why would you be there? You know your customer best. You know where they are, what they need, what they like or don’t. Go where your customers are and give them what they want, while also keeping them aware of the ever-changing demands of the industry. It’s about making calculated decisions while at the same time trusting your intuition.

Branex: B2C and B2B, both are two different categories. Do you think a B2C marketing strategy is conceivable for B2B or vice-versa?

MIRI: We’ve heard the statement: it’s no longer B2B or B2C, it’s H2H (human to human), and I couldn’t agree more. While fundamentally, some content techniques and deliverables do differ from B2B and B2C, ultimately in both categories, there are humans at the end of each content transaction. Once again it’s all about considering your audience first. In Design Thinking, the very first step is to empathize with your audience. You have to spend time getting to know them better and understanding them as much as possible. That way any strategy (marketing, communications, storytelling) is guaranteed to land the best way.

Branex: Having so many years of experience comes with lots of challenges, who do you think inspired you to pursue this field?

MIRI: I actually wanted to be a pilot. Hahahaha. For some personal circumstances, I wasn’t able to pursue aeronautics, so I took whatever was available next in college (Marketing and Communications) at a time when social media or jobs like storytellers weren’t even a thought. I think marketing pursued and found me because ultimately, I became fascinated by the psychology and neurology of human response to content.

There’s just something magically radical about the ability elements, photography, typography, and story have to capture an audience and transport them to a new world, never for them to return the same way we found them. In a way, I guess marketing is a type of aeronautics. There is that science of making your audience “travel through the air” with purposefully designed content. 

Branex: Lastly, Branex is a web and app development plus top digital marketing agency that helps startups and small businesses grow. How important is it for businesses, new or established, to collaborate with professional digital media agencies?

MIRI: The ever-changing landscape of branding continues to be influenced by many outside factors such as new generations, evolved digital channels, and advanced technologies, and this will never stop. Marketing strategies that may work today will likely be obsolete a few months from now. Brands looking to stay relevant and competitive through the ambiguous terrain seek smart ways to gain valuable industry insights and thought leadership, and even leverage these nuances for successful positioning in the market.

Digital media agencies can be a great ally in this endeavor, empowering brands with tools, services, and knowledge that help them stay ahead of the game and prepare for the future. In this type of “aeronautics”, digital media agencies can be a company’s best propellers! Collaborating with agencies can bring a competitive edge to brands that, for many reasons, cannot dedicate all of their time and efforts to creating compelling and empathetic content for their audience.

Located in the midst of their old brewery in Amsterdam, Heineken has set up perhaps one of the most famous beer museums in the world. The Heineken experience now become the 17^th most sought-after tourist magnet in Amsterdam, boasting over 400,000 paying guests annually. Unlike conventional marketing or advertising, Heineken lives up to its slogan which is in itself a remarkable strategy to introduce new visitors to their brand.

“Meet the Beer, Share the Magic”

The burgeoning burst of competition, the myriad emerging avenues of communication, the gradual overloading of advertising space, and the ever-increasing demands of customers. How can a business look beyond the horizon to offer what other brands haven’t even conceived of yet?

You can make the mark only if you unravel the mystery behind this “How” that has eluded brands for centuries!

This post is written as an inspiration! An inspiration I took from how Nike enabled users to experience their latest shoes on the product line. I believe the answer to this “How” lies in its amazing example.

Here’s what Nike did…

Nike-enabled test-run sneakers are set within an awe-inspiring video game environment for all its walk-in customers.

The company recently launched one of its hottest brands, the Nike Epic React. For its promotion, Nike created an amazing 16-bit fantasy video game environment that it calls the React Land, which I find reminiscent of Nintendo's Super Mario Bros.

Shoppers can just walk up to the mini React Land center where employees at Nike take a picture of them and transform them into a 16-bit video game character. After that, shoppers tie on the sneakers of their choosing and jog on a treadmill while their video-game avatars sprint through a springy, fluffy fantasy world, bound through deserts and forests, leap dexterously over city tops, and race past the Giant sphinx of Gaza or dancing giant pandas in China. Described as durable, light, soft, and bouncy, pillows, springs, clouds and other fun elements in the game are a metaphorical nod towards the benefits of the react technology.

The game is interactive with vibrant colors and interesting obstacles. Individuals are handed a trigger button which allows them to make jumps to avoid obstacles which makes the experience a whole lot better and further reinforces the bounciness of the shoe.

Sneak a peek at what it feels like to be a part of the React Land.

[embed]https://youtu.be/JJliIaKTtEo[/embed]

But, are brands like Nike and Heineken the only ones investing their time and effort in promoting the concept? Let’s find out who else is making a major impact using the concept of experiential marketing.

Also Read: Devise a Marketing Plan in 6 Easy Steps to Succeed

The Adidas D'Rose Jump Store

Many inspirations are derived from some of the most progressive athletes and if they become the brand ambassador for one of your products, what more could you ask for? Pop-up stores take a positive swerve, but one store that swept the crowd off its feet is located in London. The launch of the D’Rose Jump Store ignited the hearts of over a million fans.

So what did Adidas do which other brands couldn’t think of? Adidas talked the Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose into launching a pop-up store where fans were given a chance to get their hands on a pair of shoes poised 10 feet off the ground. Now, all that the fans needed to do was to make that jump. Fans poured in from all around the country to get their shot at this amazing chance to win an original D’Ross pair.

The Magic Mirror at Macy’s London

Every shopaholic is well aware of Macy’s! Let’s face it, everyone’s been there. In the heart of London city, the amazing Macy’s store is opening new doors for experiential marketing by capitalizing on their ultimate Magic Mirror technology. Haven’t heard of it yet? Don’t fret! Let me help you catch up.

At Macy’s, you don’t just buy clothes off the rack, you actually experience yourself in them in a 21st-century version of dress up, and that too without visiting a changing room, grappling with piles of clothes slung over your arms. You can digitally try anything from their New York collections by simply swiping and making a selection. Check yourself out in the magic mirror from every angle. Finding that shirt too overflowing on your bodice, tap to tone it down a size or two!

Here’s a video illustration of how sharp the supported technology behind the Magic Mirror is.

Also Read: Top 5 Successful Marketing Campaigns for Your Inspiration

Air France In-Flight Entertainment

What makes a flight service stand out above the competition? It’s the number of in-flight services they offer to their customers. And above anything else, what customers want most is entertainment. There is no doubt that long flights can become quite tedious, but with the recently launched Joon airline service of Air France, users are provided with virtual reality headsets inside the plane.

Some are restricting the flight service as solely designed for the Millennials. If you are on a long flight and you have purchased a business class ticket on Joon, you can enjoy some of your favorite TV shows and movies in a virtual reality experience. In fact, just to make things more fun, the airline allows you and the person sitting next to you to share a viewing experience with each other, making the flight more amusing.

Blink Box’s GOT Marketing Stunt

Now, we can’t exactly deem it as an experiential marketing strategy as it felt more like a well-executed PR stunt played out to grab the public’s attention. Somebody on the team of BlinkBox (UK movie and TV streaming service) thought it was a cool idea to drop a king-size dragon skull at the Dorset beach before the launch of Season 3.

Apparently, the season’s opening saw an amazing 632% increase in revenue which marked the date as one of the highest trading days for the company. All thanks to the great skull, BlinkBox made a fortune.

The Coca-Cola Hug Machine Experiment

If you are a cola lover, you should definitely try one at the Coca-Cola hug machine. Where can you find one? At the National University of Singapore maybe. On the 125th anniversary of the Singaporean University, the Coca-Cola Company installed a “hug me” vending machine within the University premises. Here, students were encouraged to hug the machine in return for an ice-cold and rejuvenating bottle.

It was a pleasant experience as most students were overwhelmed with joy when they got the chance to embrace the machine and have it reciprocated the gesture with a free Cola. Now, one can find a similar machine installed at Queen's University as well. Besides, there are other mystery machines placed at different locations. Are you interested in giving a warm fuzzy hug to this machine? It’s time you show some love and get yourself a free coke.

Bombay Sapphire Immersive Dine-In Train Journey

Last year, the famous Gin brand Bombay Sapphire launched an immersive fine dining experience for individuals on a stationary train in East London. For a reasonable £30, the train was explicitly and rather exorbitantly designed to take individuals on a sumptuous journey of gin discovery. The event was held for only a week, with the chef star Tom Seller preparing gourmet cuisines for everyone.

Although the chic dinner campaign lasted for a limited time, it created a lot of hype among beer aficionados. The exclusive nature of the event, the breathtaking and opulent ambiance, and the great-tasting cuisines created an everlasting appeal. As a result, Bombay Sapphire nurtured an interminable list of valuable connections and enabled the company to make headlines in celebrated London-based publications.

Hello Sunny Guerilla Marketing

If you have ever visited London, you may realize that it is replete with tourist spots one can visit. However Love Creative, in collaboration with MDS Ideas, initiated a perky and joy-filled campaign with their jovial costume-clad staff encouraging people to visit Fort Lauderdale to glean a unique hospitality experience. They called it the “Hello Sunny” campaign.

As the campaign gained ground across social media platforms, it instilled passers-by and commuters with joy during the bleakest and most depressing times of the year. The enthusiastic ambassadors of the campaign distributed flyers, leaflets, and brochures at some of the busiest locations across Liverpool Street Station, Southbank, and One New Change shopping center, inspiring onlookers to participate in a competition to win a free holiday. If you're feeling inspired and want to create your flyers, check out this easy-to-use flyer maker to get started!

Why Should Businesses Invest in Experiential Marketing?

Experiential marketing is all about engaging your customers & prospects at an emotional level. Instead of reading through a dull and drawn-out brand marketing pitch, watching a commercial, or experiencing an ad multiple times over, experiential marketing is more predisposed toward the ideology of touch, sense, and feel. It gives your customers an unprecedented opportunity to interact with your brand on a personal level.

The end goal of an experiential marketing strategy is to create an emotional connection between buyers and sellers to cultivate long-term customer loyalty. By brewing up a positive bond between the two, a company seeks to reach out to people who are loyal to their brand, and it is, after all, the end achievement of experiential marketing, which is one of the most significant

What it Means for Small Businesses

If the above examples are a little too rich for your taste and are making you break out a sweat, remember that fostering an awe-inspiring customer experience doesn’t have to be a bank-breaking one!

Experiential marketing integrates a grassroots movement aimed towards employing avenues such as community networks and social media to reach customers. Small businesses are restricted by limited finances and budgets and are unable to compete with global giants and multimillion-dollar corporations when it comes to mainstream advertising. However, to jump on the bandwagon and revamp the feel of your shopping experience, the key is to put on your thinking cap and explore effective yet cheaper ways of ringing in your customers. It should be out-of-the-box, creative, and proven to be successful.

Certain Public campaigns grant customers the WOW factor that is unable to be garnered by any other traditional mode of advertising, and they don’t even have to be expensive. Since Startups and small-scale businesses seldom have the capital required to invest in high-profile campaigns, creating an experience that impinges on the minds of your consumers for long is better than splurging a fortune on crappy and whine-worthy sales messages. Not only is it cost-effective, but the potential outreach can be amazing.

An example of this sort of experiential marketing is that of Fuller's brewery, which came up with its #EmptyPint campaign, a catchy social media campaign which entailed their witter users to follow the London Pride page and then post a picture of their empty London Pride glass, accompanied by the caption “#EmptyPint”. The users were rewarded with a free refill of London Pride!

This is an excellent example of how small businesses can leverage the power of platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, to lay up their online brand exposure. Instead of talking up big words with their clients, Fuller encourages them to engage with the brand, which is mutually rewarding for both.

Another great example is Cabela’s, which specializes in outdoor apparel and gear. In addition to a commendable blend of top-notch products and meticulous customer service, their unique in-store features are what complete the shopping experience for buyers.

Cabela’s stores offer something for the entire family, including bargain caves, gun libraries, boat shops, indoor archery ranges, fudge shops, delis, aquariums, wildlife displays, and mountain replicas, so that it is possible to spend hours inside their store. Although their customers come from a wide array of diverse backgrounds, they all share in their love for outdoor adventures, and that is what Cabela capitalizes on!

What Experiential Marketing Looks Like

The years ahead of us mark the birth of machine learning, AI, and immersive technologies. Brands of today are going to make use of such technologies to create remarkable experiences for users worldwide. Wouldn’t you like a vending machine that understands your needs better before giving you a specific can of free cola? How about a magic mirror that knows what you have already worn previously and helps you pick a better outfit? Because one way or another, it all depends on how you make your customers feel.

The famous Maya Angelou, (poet and philosopher) once said,

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

Influencer marketing is the latest buzzword and I am sure you must have heard this phrase. And I am sure about this too that you don’t know what the heck is that and how digital marketers are using it to their advantage. Before the actual Infographic, I will try to guide you about what is influencer marketing and how top companies can make sure they get the most out of this latest marketing tactic. Influencer marketing is focused on specific key individuals rather than the target market as a whole. An influencer has a different image for every brand and usually for every campaign of a brand which makes it intriguing but also more exciting than other forms of marketing. An influencer is like a third party which fills the gap between a company and its target customers as people tend to trust the recommendation from a third party more than a company itself. Companies virtually obsess about their target audience and try to come up with lots of strategies, campaigns, and tactics based on a huge amount of research to make sure they can get the nod from them about their product. The influencers make this task easy by reaching the potential customers of a company giving them the information and showing them the benefits of buying a product. That’s where influencer marketing succeeds big time. The following Infographic will describe in detail how influencer marketing has gained a foothold in the last 2 years or so and where it’s heading. The future looks definitely optimistic and this Infographic indicates that influencer marketing is truly mainstream now.