How Some Brands Use Twitter

Here's a non-exhaustive of list of how three brands are using Twitter.

Dell

Dell announced that it had made more than $3,000,000 in sales from Twitter followers who clicked through its posts to its web sites to make purchases using their @delloutlet sells refurbished products at reduced prices, and use twitter as a way to message out coupons, clearance events and new information.

The incentive to follow @delloutlet is to receive information about reduced priced goods. Dell started to tweet about discounted goods when they had around 11,000 followers.

Their followers responded by re-tweeting @delloutlet messages to their followers, and their numbers rose to around 600,000 in two years. Using their propriety tracking technology Dell estimates their twitter account @delloutlet is responsible for $3M of sales.

You can find out more from Dell’s website: http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/06/11/dellou...

Square Space

Square space created a “gigantic THANK YOU to all of their favorite Squarespace fans” by offering them an Iphone. All their fans had to do was send a tweet with the #squarespace tag to be eligible to win a new iPhone.

Using this approach Square Space became a top trend during the first three days of their campaign. This helped them reach to 35,000 followers.

The use of #squarespace hashtags while explaining why one would want to win an Iphone became the viral device for the promotion to spread.

This illustrates in very simple, and raw terms how Twitter can be used to promote a brand by offering an incentive.

Spymaster

Spymaster is a social game based on Twitter. Each player becomes a master of a spy ring based upon their Twitter followers list. The more people that follow you and are playing characters in spymaster, the more network is.

You can make money, buy guns, assassinate other players, and collect safe houses.