Twitter Favorites: How to Use Them In Your Marketing

Recently, I read a piece from a fellow Patriot from my alma mater, George Mason University. Kevin Loker wrote about Twitter Favoriting, a subject that has peaked my interests for a while. He spoke of it from a journalistic view; however, I think favoriting holds some benefit to marketers.

In comparison to a reply or a retweet, a Twitter favorite is almost like an afterthought. Maybe you didn’t have the energy to retweet or reply, you just didn’t know what else to say and/or you wanted to read the tweet later. Favoriting a tweet seems a little mysterious because there isn’t a clear strategy over this little star.

It’s a part of the Twitter family, but it doesn’t significantly shine as bright as it’s two brothers. It’s a “nice” touch. Now, I’m not saying a Twitter Favorite doesn’t have any significance or doesn’t do anything to contribute to your social media tactics. Heck, I use it all the time. I use it to signal that I like certain topics, like corgis, or I use it as a simple “Thank You” or “You’re Welcome” when people reach out to TrackMaven. I’m not really sure many analytics tools track who favorites your tweets, it’s almost like unknown territory.

When looking at my own favorites I see a mish mash of things I “like” (subconsciously interpreting Twitter terms as Facebook, you’re welcome Mark Zuckerberg)

However, I believe in fully utilizing all of the tools that are set out in front of you because you never know what you could be missing. A cohesive brand is an important point to takeaway out of all of this and streamlining your twitter favorites could add a little piece to hold it together.

Taking a look at some Favorite feeds of some Marketers and Companies…

Starbucks, although makes the mistake of not interacting with customers enough, shows a pretty fluid favorite feed. With support from followers to the typical artsy notion that Starbucks wants to project, they aren’t slacking on this feed.

MarketingProfs has a great Twitter Favorite feed with a showcase of follower love and marketing that interests them. It all relates back to marketing for them.

Uh oh. SEOmoz is one of my go-to daily reads and I think they have one of the best content strategies around. However, their Twitter Favorites is lacking. SEOmoz has a strong following and large community of supporters, maybe it isn’t in their best interest to do so?

Taking a closer look into some more brands, it seems that Twitter Favoriting can vary. Although, McDonalds is pretty active on twitter and answering customers, they aren’t utilizing favorites. One company that absolutely soars in answering customers, retweeting and overall owning Twitter is Buffer. They’ve maxed out on really using their favorites.

I enjoyed reading my fellow Patriot’s take on what you should do with your favorites, but I think using it as a marketing standpoint will take it a step further. This simple Twitter Favoriting stream can fully utilize what you’re brand is trying to say. I think laying out a few more examples on how TrackMaven is using the Twitter Favorites to what we think is our advantage. These aren’t set in stone because the Twitter Favoriting is so ambiguous anyway; however, there is some value to be spoken about in the little star.

A simple “Thank You”

I was constantly reminded by my parents to always say “Please” and “Thank You.” They were magic words and could guarantee me something I wanted at the time. (If only life was still that easy.) However, I’m still a huge advocate for showing your appreciation and I think it goes a long way on Twitter. While people collectively sending out over 200 million tweets a day, I barely imagine how some of the larger brands or even celebrities handle the shower of 140 characters. It begins to become slightly understandable that some brands don’t even respond back; however, I still find it unacceptable. Yet, there is one way to appease Twitter users like me. And that’s where the Twitter favoriting comes in. Clicking the star takes very minimal effort, but shows that simple “Thank You” for reaching out. If a brand can’t reply to me because of an overload of tweets, I would be content in knowing that they at least acknowledged it.

Plus, if someone were to scroll through your favorites they could see that you took the time to favorite some of the things your followers tweeted at you and at the very least there was some brand interaction.

“Campaigning”

This can easily backfire, like the Starbucks campaign in the UK #SpreadtheCheer, but forming a campaign with a hashtag is an easy way for you to interact with your audience more. Taking this a step further is to “favorite” any user who uses this specific campaign hashtag. This will not only signal to the user that you saw them participating in the campaign, but it keeps a consistent log of the campaign on your Twitter Favorites feed. It also will keep some tab on followers who are tweeting out the campaign and also gives the user that aforementioned “Thank You.”

Self-Promotion

Your biggest fan is — you. Well it should be and I’m all for being humble and modest about your own accomplishments; however, self-promotion is the easiest way to push your brand forward.

For TrackMaven, I think its apparent what we love — data, marketing and corgis. But, would you know that if we didn’t promote any of it. TrackMaven is all about those things and a little self-promotion doesn’t hurt anyone.

Favoriting is a simple way to do that. For example, on the TrackMaven twitter account, sometimes I do a simple search of corgis. Usually, I find personal tweets about how someone wants a corgi or pictures of there own corgi. I won’t usually favorite those things, unless they are directly related to TrackMaven. However, sometimes I find other things. Right around the holidays, I saw that @DailyPuppy tweeted about there 12 days of Pupmas. It happened on day 6 they tweeted about Corgi puppies. This was a perfect tweet to favorite. It corresponded with another brand, but also promoted indirectly TrackMaven’s love for corgis. It took about 2 minutes to do a quick search, but it helps maintain the fun and goofy appeal of Maven.

Although sometimes forgotten, Twitter favoriting can be used to your advantage. They aren’t exactly fleeting things because they do remain in a chronological feed on your profile, so long as you haven’t “unfavorited” the things. They provide an easy way to interact, a historical log of your previous campaigns on Twitter, and a way to promote your own brand. So why not take advantage of such an easy tool to enhance another part of your twitter profile.

What do you think about Twitter favoriting? Agree or Disagree you can let me know @sabelharris or bark at Maven @TrackMavenApp.