Twitter Showdown

Communicating with Consumers

Mark Faber

Twitter is the World’s second largest Social Media platform and if you have not heard of it or don’t have an account, sign up now and then read the rest of this blog. Twitter is a great platform for instant communication, from technical support to questions about products or just putting news out into the digital world. All companies should have Twitter and monitor it regularly to find out what consumers are saying about their brand or products. Today we are going to look at IAMs (@IAMS, active since 2009) and Blue Buffalo’s (@bluebuffalo, active since 2012) Twitter accounts.

Quick Facts

	Blue Buffalo	IAMs
Followers	10,600	18,000
Number of Tweets	4,310	15,100
Average # of Retweets and Favourites	5 Retweets and 6 Favourites	1 and 1
Post Frequency	3 times a day	Once every 8 days

IAMs Tweet for #CatHerdersDay

These numbers are just a quick glance into their Twitter accounts, the past 25 posts to be precise. Both brands follow the 50/50 rule (one content post for one promotional post) which is good, consumers don’t want to have their Twitter feeds being spammed with advertisements or they will unfollow you. IAMs makes good use of their tagline in their tweets, using the #IAMsDifference in almost all their tweets. Unfortunately Blue does not take full advantage of the hashtag for keywords, except for #EndPetCancer. May is Pet Cancer month and Blue Buffalo is doing an excellent job with content that is helpful and relatable to pet owners.

Tweet for #EndPetCancer

IAMs is missing the whole point of Twitter by only posting every 8 days, taking the instant and quick updates completely out of the picture. Blue Buffalo takes full advantage by posting and retweeting multiple times a day. Top tweets from IAMs (3 retweets and 9 favourites) and Blue Buffalo (9 retweets and 52 favourites) were not promotional, but sharing fun pictures. This is exactly what people are hoping to see on Twitter; short and informative tweets with engaging visuals. So remember Twitter is designed for instant communication, sharing news and up to the minute information, not just a free form of advertisement.