#BrandsTalkTwitter ⁠— PizzaHut

In a new series, we get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how our favourite brands’ on Twitter use the platform.   

This week it’s the turn of Pizza Hut Restaurants (@pizzahutuk). 

While many brands are (rightly) respectful of the power of social media, @pizzahutuk has been unafraid to use it to generate a furore. A prime example of this is its decision to engage with Leeds United (@LUFC) over the latter’s spying scandal.

Here’s what the @pizzahutuk social team told @TwitterMktgUK: 

1. What role does Twitter fulfil in your social media strategy?

Twitter allows us to demonstrate our brand personality. We can have fun with our followers and the wider community. We’re able to engage with topical trends, which keeps our brand relevant. Ultimately, Twitter allows us to really connect with those who want to speak to us.

2. How do you handle direct messaging from consumers?

Twitter’s Direct Messaging function is a great tool for helping us to handle guest enquiries. We work with our comms agency, Tangerine, to manage our community – we field a lot of comments and the Direct Messaging functionality is key to ensuring we conduct strong and effective conversations with the customers in their time of need. 

3. How do you split planned activity vs tactical?

We leverage different social media platforms to play on their strengths. Planned activity is important as it allows us to carefully communicate our deals, offers and news updates in a time that’s right for our audience. It also allows us to plan ahead. That said, for us, Twitter provides a really strong arena for tactical activity, playing to its strengths by being primed to identify trends and opportunities that are relevant to our brand and audience to forge great reactive content. This means when the right opportunity comes along, we have something great to go out with. We find fluidity is key - it pays to be agile!

4. What is the most important thing to bear in mind before you Tweet?

The most important thing? The Twitter community will spot ANYTHING. Twitter is a wonderful place and people feel empowered when they’re using it. As a result, often to the detriment of brands, any tiny errors or inconsistencies will rise to the surface. Always double check your information before you tweet. Is the price correct? Is that how you spell mozzarella? Does that emoji REALLY mean what you think it means? That’s why brevity works really well on Twitter. Fewer words.

5 .What’s your most successful Tweet?

We’ve been quite spoilt. This year alone, we’ve already found ourselves on Good Morning Britain after teasing carnivore, Piers Morgan, during Veganuary. The most successful tweet this year has to be our response to Leeds United in January. We had a cheeky dig at the club during the manager’s spying controversy and Leeds United responded with a jab about delivery times. We hit back instantly and our response had the media in a frenzy. It featured on Radio X with Chris Moyles and made headlines all over Europe. At the moment, brands are quite daunted by the power of this sort of thing, but when you look back at it, it’s actually harmless and wonderfully humanising. Brands are nothing if they can’t connect with their customers and showing personality and wit is such a compelling way to do this. Twitter is the home of this sort of thing and long may it continue.

6. What gets the most engagement from your followers?

As a brand, we like to have a bit of banter and enjoy ourselves, especially on Twitter, where that kind of thing is well received . We welcome engagements from our followers and we’re not afraid to inject real personality in our interaction with them. Our best successes come from adding value to these moments by understanding our audience and creating content that really resonates with our followers and the wider Twitter community.

Whatever your brand’s personality, Twitter can give it a platform to convey this as well as connect to your target customer base. 

This is something @pizzahutuk has well understood. As such it ’s worth a follow, but just be prepared for a response if you try to banter with it.