5 Twitter Lessons From 5 Wildly Likable Accounts

I had a funny realization the other day. 

As a marketer you think a lot about how to position your tweets so that they stand out against your competitors in a prospect's feed, right? 

But what about all the other accounts they follow?

@Forbes? @Nike? Or perhaps the toughest competition of them all...@Beyonce?

Somewhere out there our company's tweets are competing against Beyoncé's for attention. 

While it's seemingly counterproductive to compare your business to such huge names, it does serve as a great motivator to better your current strategy.

So we sized up some of the most likable brands on Twitter to get a better idea of what they're doing to stand out. We're talking everyone from Taco Bell to HubSpot. 

We turned our findings into takeaways and you can find them detailed below. 

Be helpful

Bickering with customer service representatives falls somewhere between doing laundry and pumping gas on my list of things I hate doing. 

I'd venture to guess that's pretty standard across the board for most people, which is why quality customer service has become something worth gawking over. 

If there's anyone that realizes this, it's Zappos. 

At first I was reluctant to include Zappos in this round up. Not because their customer service doesn't deserve the recognition, but because I felt it's been overdone.

I mean, everyone knows Zappos rules, right?

Wrong. If everyone knew than there would be way more brands worth mentioning here, and quite truthfully, there's not. 

Customer service is evolving right alongside new technologies, making it critical for businesses to keep pace. 

If your business doesn't have a plan in place to follow up with social media complaints and questions, consider implementing a marketing automation software like HubSpot. 

HubSpot's Social Inbox makes it easy for marketers to monitor mentions of their business in real-time. Not to mention, the tool is connected with your business' contact database so you can prioritize engagement based of a contact's lead status. 

Always be innovating

It's easy to follow the heard on Twitter. 

But as our marketing director always says, "If you're riding the bandwagon, you can't be steering it."

When they're not busy Snapchatting their loyal customers, Taco Bell is hard at work plotting brilliant marketing social media campaigns like this one:

Confused? That's because what you're looking at has never been done before. They're just that darn innovative. 

In an effort to push social media followers to try out their mobile app, Taco Bell blacked out all of their social media accounts leaving nothing but a download link.

Sound crazy? Crazy enough to push their app into the top 25 most downloaded app for iOS users in the United States. (Source: Marketing Land)

The brands that get noticed on social media are the ones that aim to disrupt the natural flow of things. Don't be afraid to go against the grain.

Who knows, that crazy idea you had just might work. 

Inspire people

Charity Water's Twitter feed features countless inspiring photos of the impact their organization has had on the clean water movement. 

It's real. It's raw. It's refreshing. 

They understand that inspiring content is highly shareable, and use this to put forth messages that encourage people to take action. 

This approach has helped them create a presence that gets noticed. 

The ability to trigger an emotional response through your content is very powerful. With that being said, consider what your business can do to inspire your audience. 

Showcase an awesome project. Highlight the volunteer work your team got involved in. Share a quote that moved you. 

Do something different. 

Be a good teacher

For awhile I thought my 5th grade teacher, Mr.Stone, would go down in history as my favorite teacher ever...and then I met HubSpot. 

HubSpot's Twitter feed is flooded with actionable, valuable tips, insights, and hacks. As a result, they've positioning themselves as a reliable source for instructional ebooks, up-to-date statistics, and blog articles that transcend far beyond average. 

I like to think of this approach in terms of that old Chinese proverb,"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime."

HubSpot's resources aim to teach marketers how to implement strategies that will help their businesses grow continually. It's the type of stuff worth coming back for. It's the type of stuff that earns your attention. 

What type of insight can your business give away? 

Share the lessons that you've learned with your audience. They'll thank you for it. 

Be entertaining

If you're misusing your marketing automation software, it's easy for your tweets to become flat. Dare I say, vanilla?

You see, accounts that are conditioned to "set it and forget it" simply aren't getting it.

I mean, they don't call it social media for nothing, right?

Refinery29 does a ridiculously good job putting forth a Twitter presence that's both entertaining and human. 

While they share a ton of their own content, they do a great job of avoiding monotony by breaking it up with super relatable tweets like this:

...or this all too familiar feeling:

These are the kind of tweets that are hard not to notice.

If you're looking for a way to amuse your audience, consider letting your personality shine through a bit. Take a page from Refinery 29's book and pepper in some GIFs to break up your regular scheduling routine.