Anyone remember Twitter? It’s had more death knells than the death of blogging itself.
But done well, it still can connect your brand to individuals in a very personal way, allowing you to respond with personality, with humour and with timeliness.
Don’t underestimate the power of any of those things in building any kind of brand. Take the example of Gower Cottage Brownies.
From the Gower Coast to QVC domination
I’ve known Kate for years, initially thanks to Twitter and my food blog.
Oh, and some good stalking by Kate, also known as blogger engagement. But she found me through Twitter, and asked if I’d like to try her brownies.
Chocolate fiend.
Simple answer.
But what Kate gets marks for are two things: pro-activity and follow through.
Without those two things, you can have all the social media tools in the world, but they’ll do your brand no good at all.
Pro-activity beats inactivity
Which is really no surprise, but Twitter allows you to be pro-active in a very targetted way. Know your audience, find your audience, talk to your audience.
Nothing fancy, no lessons needed. Kate is great at chatting, being human, taking the mick out of herself. We’ve all lived through many tales of #KateonaTrain and she is well known to the customer care team of Great Western Rail, on good journeys and bad.
Yes, Gower Cottage has famous fans, and followers, and getting brownies into influencers hands was definitely one of Kate’s stategies. As it turns out, Twitter is a bit like playing six degrees of separation, and many of Kate’s famous followers have come from other people who know them.
But then all of that is no good without the second part.
Without follow through, all activity is rubbish
What I love about Kate compared to many other brands is that she follows through. No lead left to go cold, no contact made and then forgotten.
No brownies promised and then not delivered.
You might think that’s easy, that everyone does that.
I can tell you for every approach to my food blog from a brand like Gower Cottage I probably have 10 approaches that I never hear from again. And that’s after I’ve said yes, thank you for getting in touch, would love to hear more and take you up on your offer of trying your product.
Primed and ready to go.
And then tumbleweed moments. For days, weeks and months.
Just because Twitter is easy it doesn’t mean there’s no hard work
Yes, a tweet probably takes you less than a minute to type. The follow up might need you to do old fashioned stuff.
Like send your press pack.
Pack up and send samples.
Heaven forbid, an old school, real world trip to the Post Office.
In other words, some graft, some leg work.
And then some more, as you do the next stage of the follow up, checking in with the recipient.
If you’re not ready to do that end of things, then no, Twitter cannot build you a brand.
But then not much can.
But take a few leaves out of Kate’s book and, as Gower Cottage Brownies has shown, the world really is your oyster.
Or box of brownies.
Watch the hard work on Twitter at @GowerCottage and join in with the banter. Oh, and do yourself a favour. Order a box or three. You won’t regret it.
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