Marketing

#BrandsTalkTwitter ⁠— How Greggs’ cheeky tone of voice paid off

By
Wednesday, 14 August 2019

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

This week we spoke to @GreggsOfficial, which is a big user of the platform.  A prime example is the successful launch of its vegan sausage roll, which created a social media splash on Twitter and led to a boost in sales

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

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

It gives us plenty of opportunities to have light-hearted two-way conversations with our audience that we perhaps can’t achieve as naturally on other platforms. We treat our content on this channel as a conversation starter, rather than being posted solely for ‘consumption’, which gives us plenty of scope for community management.

2. How do you handle direct messaging from consumers? 

Twitter is our key channel for customer service queries. We aim to reply to all queries, no matter how big or small. We’re very conversational, so even if a follower just messages us to say Hi, we’re happy to chat. We’re nice like that!

3. How do you split planned activity vs tactical? 

Whilst we recognise the importance of planned activity, Twitter is the perfect channel for reactive content. It’s a destination for news, and as such, a lot of our content is anecdotal and reactive to what we’re thinking, or what’s happening on that particular day. 

We usually try and have around two planned posts per week and then collate from a collection of reactive opportunities each day. We pick out the options which we think will resonate best with our audience. This often involves us scoping out how we engage with our customer’s conversations in real-time, as well as observing what’s trending that day.

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

- Is the tone of voice right for us?

- Is the asset the best quality it can be?

- Is it relevant to what the audience is thinking or feeling (i.e. why would they care?)

- Is it shareable? (if you saw it, would you show your mate?)

- Does the topic feel natural for us to talk about? (don’t try and force an association that isn’t there)

It’s easy to fall into the trap of broadcasting generic commercial messaging, hoping that it’ll drive sales or get the visibility you need. After a while though, this content just becomes white noise. Social media is about being entertained, so we always try to ask ourselves if it’s something our audience will enjoy seeing. That way, our followers won’t mind if we do try and sell them a product every so often.

5. What’s your most successful Tweet? 

For 2019, our most successful Tweet came from our launch video promoting our Vegan Sausage Roll. This was a much-anticipated product and something we’d had plenty of requests for previously, so we did expect a high level of engagement with this particular Tweet. 

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The traction that it achieved also meant we were able to respond to some divided opinions among our audience; many of our replies gained massive engagement, as well as the original post. It goes to show that the power of strong community management really lends itself well to this channel, and maintaining our cheeky tone of voice in this scenario really paid off.

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6. What gets the most engagement from your followers?

We tend to  see that anything that celebrates ‘brand love’ lands really well with our followers. Our approach has always been to ‘keep it real’ and subtly making fun of popular British culture, and this is something our audience has come to recognise and love about our social presence.

 

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So whether yours is a steak slice or a vegan sausage roll, @GreggsOfficial is a part of British high street life and well worth a follow on Twitter. 

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This Tweet is unavailable.