Twitter’s tips for what brands should do (and avoid) on its app this year

Brands desperately want to stand out on Twitter. Sometimes it goes well, other times, not so much. And sometimes a brand’s tweets can make a bad situation worse. (Remember Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s shrimp saga?)

At any rate, Twitter is offering up a few nuggets of research for brands to peruse as they make Wordles craft social strategies for 2022. Last week, it released #RealTalk, a report that sheds some light on how people perceive brands on the platform. The study involved an analysis of 5,000 “unprompted tweets about brands” as well as a survey of thousands of Twitter users in the US + seven other countries, including Brazil and Canada. Some highlights:

• Same tweets, different day: According to Twitter, it showed US survey respondents tweets from various “prominent” brands without any “identifiable branding,” like names and logos. Only one in three respondents was able to select the right brand from a list of five options. 😬
• No joke: Brands want to be funny on Twitter—maybe too much. Roughly 50% of respondents agreed “brands that rely on humor and jokes can feel outdated today.”
• To post or not to post: Only 7% of global respondents said marketers should not tweet about social and cultural issues (56% agreed they could, while 37% think they should).

Looking ahead: So what’s Twitter’s advice? “Distinction is everything a brand needs to succeed on Twitter,” the report reads. “It’s time to revisit what seems right for your brand, not just what topics are trending, or what other people are jumping in on.”—MS