Branding Brands on Twitter

This week we were given the task of following five brands on Twitter that we frequent; the five brands that I followed include: The Coca-Cola Co., Apple, Victoria’s Secret: PINK, Hollister Co., and Chick-fil-A, Inc. In my previous Twitter experience, when I tweet at a brand the normally reply within a few minutes to an hour from the time I tweeted.

In this week, for some reason the brands that I selected and tweeted it were not as responsive as they had been in the past. I chose to contact the brands that I was targeting by directly tweeting them rather than using a direct message. I felt that if I was to reach out to them in a more public domain they would be more likely to respond since others interested in the same company would see. As previously stated, this did not yield the results I had planned.

This leads me to wonder if there is a suggested time or maybe even a follower count that leads brands to be more likely to respond to a consumer tweet. Despite my lack of success with most of my tweets, one brand did respond to me within an hour of my tweet that was directed towards; the brand that responded was Victoria’s Secret: PINK. I had tweeted, “Can’t wait to see what deals @VSPINK is offering this weekend!!!” The company then responded with, “Stay tuned, Elizabeth! ;)”. The response was not quite what I had been expecting, I thought there would be more substance to it or even just a bit longer. However, I do appreciate the fact that this company does respond to their customers and address the questions they might pose. This dynamic shows an immense amount of respect to their customers that other companies do not possess (*cough, cough*).

The fact that a company is willing to reach out to their customers shows a lot about the company and it helps them to build their brand. Their brand is a company that is considerate of its customers and aspires to make their customer experience the best it can be across a

ll aspects of the seller-consumer relationship. If I was to repeat an experiment like the one completed over the course of this week, I would try to make the tweets during “business hours” and I would try it with a higher follower count.