Twitter Social Platform

Twitter is a social networking platform offering micro-blogging services to users. It approves users to post quick messages known as tweets hoping they will be useful, informative and interesting to different people. A Tweet is a message that may contain textual content characters up to 140, photos, links to other websites and videos delivered to other customers in real time. Unlike instant messaging, tweets don’t disappear after closing the utility and are posted on a public Twitter website. They are permanent and searchable by twitter contributors and non-members. It informs people of what’s happening round the world on various fields including, sports, news, music, politics, celebrities or people’s day-to-day encounters in real time. Twitter involves friends, families, co-workers, organizations and new people who stay connected and interact through exchanging quick short messages.

Twitter works on concepts like tweeting, retweet, follow, search, post, hashtag, nametag, and list. To start off, it requires creating an account using an email address as a primary key. Once account is ready, you can search for people or organizations of interest, import contacts from other platforms such as Facebook and invite friends from mail contact list. Once you identify people or groups of interest, you follow them. This medium gives you updates on every post they do which appears your timeline. The same way people can follow you back where Twitter will notify you of such events. Your followers will read your updates and anyone else who can search for a keyword “hashtag” since the platform is public. They can reply to your tweets at will as well. For controlling stability and abuse, twitter regulates the follow and update limits. You can link your twitter to other platforms such as blogs if you want to reach out to more users. For private conversations, users can do direct messaging which the public cannot see. For originality, tweets cannot be modified; they, however, can be deleted by the owner.

Rayovac Corporation

Rayovac is a third leading manufacturer of alkaline batteries in the US. It is a market leader in manufacturing other categories of cells including, heavy duty, keyless entry, computer backup, lantern and hearing aid. It also produces flashlights, shaving, garden care and lawn products. The company’s Mission is to provide the industry with most powerful solutions to consumers and employees while its Vision is to become a market driven and technology-focused global consumer products company. The company has maintained leadership in battery manufacturing since the 1900s. Initially, it lagged behind Energizer and Duracell but it enjoyed its rebirth in 1996, it was bought by Thomas H. Lee and changed the management (Gale, 2006). Through its variety and expanding portfolio of global standard brands, it maintains its leading market position in major product categories. Rayovac products are sold by retailers within the US and several countries around the world.

Rayovac joined the Spectrum Brands family in 2005. The family is a worldwide consumer product manufacturer. Spectrum brand is listed as Russell 2000 on US stock exchange. Spectrum brand is made up of several well known, trusted and market-leading brands. The brands’ products are available in top retailers in approximately 140 nations. This global coverage allows the companies under spectrum access to research opportunities, spectacular facilities and pooling of resources with corporations under the same brand to provide customers with the best service.

Rayovac Twitter PR Campaign

Early February 2012 was characterized by a snowstorm covering proportions on the horizon. Social media platforms were flooding with news and updates on the weather. This scenario meant millions of Americans would not make it to work thus spending their time online at their homes. Rayovac utilized the opportunity of a vast online audience; it started a twitter hashtag “#snowballs.” The campaign was mainly a virtual snowball fight in which the company threw snowballs at their customers and followers prompting them to put a Rayovac widget as their profile picture. The consumers also hurled #snowballs at their followers including friends and families who also kept the trend going for about 48hours. Rayovac also hosted a tweet-up which followers tweeted about the state of the weather in their location, their favorite activities during snow day as well as a chance to win great gifts by answering a trivia on storm preparations and atmospheric conditions. The PR campaign was a huge success; Rayovac followers increased by 30%, there were 1,188 clicks to download the widget for the profile picture, the company made its way to top 10 trending topics globally (Black, 2011).

The campaign was very effective since it took advantage of the situation of the vast online audience, it reached out to people over huge geographical areas. It was more of fun to followers as it was like a snowball game. To the company’s’ followers it was an interesting and new thing, they enjoyed doing it and the company gained concerning marketing the business. It was a win-win situation as the company benefited regarding business and the followers kept themselves happy and engaged during the snow storm. To improve the campaign, the company should link all other social platforms to direct and inform followers of what’s going on. For example, this Rayovac campaign was on Twitter, followers on Facebook and other platforms were not aware unless they were also followers on Twitter. This interlinking of the social media platforms will increase the coverage thus reaching out for more audience. Secondly, the company should not wait for an event like the storm to start a campaign. They should put in place ongoing campaigns since the online audience is still huge even without such events like a snow storm. The company should also have set goals if it’s to increase followers, accumulate mentions of their brand and other. Once the goal is set, campaigns can lay more focus and emphasis towards achieving it (Carnoy, 2016). Having an open campaign can otherwise lead to achievements that are not important in a given context.

References

Black, L. (2011). 5 Smart Social PR Campaigns to Learn From

Retrieved 04 November 2017 from http://mashable.com/2011/03/08/social-pr-campaigns/#YTYgYDGho8q6

Carnoy, J. (2016). 5 Tips for Running Your Best Social Media Campaign Ever

Retrieved 04 November 2017 from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/272231

Gale, T. (2016). Rayovac Corporation

Retrieved 04 November 2017 from http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/economics-business-and-labor/businesses-and-occupations/rayovac-corp

Gil, P. (2017). What Is Twitter & How Does It Work?

Retrieved 03 November 2017 from https://www.lifewire.com/what-exactly-is-twitter-2483331