Australian businesses and brands on Twitter

by James Duthie on February 25, 2009

For those who haven’t quite caught up with the news, I begrudgingly renounced my anti-Twitter stance recently.  It was a difficult move, particularly after I very publicly stated my disdain for the service. But ignore it as I may, I had to swallow my pride after the damn thing just kept growing at an exponential rate. Eventually contempt had to make way for professional necessity. So I joined. You can find me here. Connecting with people has been easy with lists like this. However,  trying to find Australian businesses on Twitter was infinitely harder. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a centralised resource listing Australian businesses on Twitter. So I decided to create one… because everyone loves a good list!

First off… I expect this list is far from exhaustive. Ultimately, I’d like it to be a collaborative effort, so if you know of a business I haven’t listed, drop me a comment and I’ll include it. My investigation has focused on bigger business as I am particularly interested in how large organisations attempt to leverage the new medium. But I’m sure adoption amongst nimbler small businesses is likely to be significant. Unfortunately, they’re just a little harder to track… so hit me up if you’re a small biz on Twitter. Also note that I’ve also excluded media organisations who are in the broadcast business as Twitter is simply another broadcast medium for them (newspapers, magazines, radio, blogs, tv).

Let’s take a look at the results (listed alphabetically):

Amnesty Australia

  • Date Joined: November 2nd, 2008
  • Traction: High. The Amnesty team have generated well over 500 followers in less than 6 months of usage. Amnesty does tend to follow a high proportion of Tweeters as compared to many other brands, so an element of re-follow is likely.
  • Participation Style: Broadcast. But like many charities/movements on Twitter, no-one is going to hold that against them. Tweets are dedicated to spreading messages of human rights, with recent Tweets focusing on topics such as violence against women, capital punishment & racism. Amnesty are relatively frequent Re-Tweeters of messages that fit their mission.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Non existent. Amnesty does not engage at all with other Tweeters, which is a missed opportunities as human rights issues are bound to be discussed frequently within Twitter’s walls.

Atlassian

  • Date Joined: December 11th, 2008
  • Hat Tip: Matt
  • Traction: Moderate. Atlassian has generated over 250 followers in a few months of activity.
  • Participation Style: Promotional broadcast. The Twitter account is used almost exclusively to promote new posts on the Atlassian blog. However, it does seem that the Atlassian team maintain separate personal accounts with the purpose of roaming Twitter to proactively connect with customer to provide support.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Non existent. None of the most recent 20 posts were active conversations with fellow Tweeters.

Becks

  • Date Joined: February 8th, 2009
  • Hat Tip: Mike
  • Traction: High. The Becks account has generated almost 500 followers in a short space of time. Admittedly, that probably has a whole lot to do with the product (beer) and an aggressive strategy of following other Tweeters.
  • Participation Style: High frequency broadcast. To be honest I’m not quite sure exactly what Becks is trying to achieve with the Uberselektor concept. Seems to be a branding initiative to appeal to the cool kids via music. On the micro site it states “searching out city life with a difference“. The Twitter feed is used to push out events notifications, most of which are DJ sets. Gen Y targeting methinks…
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Very low. Just one out of Becks’ last 20 Tweets was a response to a follower.

Boardshop

  • Date Joined: October 6th, 2008.
  • Traction: Amazing. This is a win for the little guys. Boardshop has over 1,500 followers, which is remarkable given the size of the business and the low participation level (less than 50 Tweets at the time of publishing). Clearly at some point these guys have effectively marketed their Twitter account. I guess it helps when you’ve got a hardcore & passionate customer base.
  • Participation Style: Promotional. Despite their heavy following, the Boardshop aren’t really leveraging Twitter to it’s potential. Tweeting rarely extends beyond product promotion. With a truly passionate customer base there has to be opportunities to connect with skaters, understand customer needs, build real loyalty and offer tickets to VIP events.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Non existent. None of the most recent 20 Tweets were active conversations with customers. Big opportunity missed. There must be tonnes of skaters out there Tweeting!

Cascade Brewery

  • Date Joined: October 15th, 2008
  • Traction: Moderate. Cascade Brewery has accumulated over 200 followers. However, I tend to think the beer factor is at play again rather than truly engaging Tweeting.
  • Participation Style: Spasmodic and irregular. I’m not sure Cascade have figured out how they want to use Twitter. Participation to this point has focused on the occasional news release and delivery of the ‘drink responsibly’ message. But one thing is for sure, with a passionate customer base, they could be doing plenty more!
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Moderate. Just under half of Cascade’s Tweets were responses to followers. But with only 15 Tweets it’s probably too early to identify a trend.

CustomWare

  • Date Joined: May 18th, 2008
  • Hat Tip: Laurel
  • Traction: Low. The CustomWare account has less than 100 followers.
  • Participation Style: A mixture of self promotion and cross promotion. Most of CustomWare’s Tweets direct followers to new content items on their web site. However, CustomWare also semi regularly promote events and products of industry partners such as Atlassian.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Non existent. None of the last 20 Tweets were direct responses to fellow Tweeters. However, niche brands have lesser scope for interaction as independent brand chatter is greatly reduced.

Domino’s Pizza

  • Date Joined: January 14th, 2009
  • Traction: Moderate. Domino’s have accrued a couple of hundred followers; but I suspect most are via reciprocal follows, as Domino’s follow a lot more people than most other companies.
  • Participation Style: Random. Like Cascade I doubt Domino’s have figured out exactly how they can use Twitter within their business. Here’s a suggestion – how about Tweeting me when the delivery guy has just left the store. Then I can have a good idea of when to expect the pizza?
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Low. Just over a quarter of Domino’s Tweets have been @ responses, but they do seem to reply when questions/comments are directed their way.

EMI Music

  • Date Joined: February 10th, 2009
  • Traction: High. EMI will surpass 500 followers soon after just a month of Twitter usage. Take note fellow Gen Y marketers.
  • Participation Style: Resourceful. EMI seems to be aiming to establish themselves as an information resource for music junkies. Participation focuses on linking to new artists, blogs and music videos for both Australian and international artists. EMI also semi regularly Retweets the work of other industry participants including Triple J.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Moderate. Five of the most recent 20 Tweets were responses to fellow members.

Fairfax Digital

  • Date Joined: March 4th, 2009
  • Hat Tip: Laurel
  • Traction: Moderate. Fairfax has generated over 300 followers in less than a month. However, it’s likely that many are employees, journalists and social media enthusiasts.
  • Participation Style: 100% promotional. Fairfax’s Tweets all serve a promotional purpose of some nature. Many of the Tweets point followers to a story published on one of their publications. Alternatively, a number of Tweets promote Fairfax journalists or properties.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Non existent. Fairfax has not engaged in a single conversation with a fellow Tweeter. It is early days in their usage however. Shall we give them the benefit of the doubt…? Nah!

iiNet

  • Date Joined: September 30th, 2008
  • Traction: Moderate. iiNet has attracted over 250 followers.
  • Participation Style: Not quite broadcast, yet not quite customer support. Indeed, a recent Tweet confirmed that iiNet don’t intend to offer support via Twitter – “140 character limit + privacy issues mean we aren’t offering support over Twitter but try our experts on 13 22 58“. While proactive outreach isn’t the nature of participation, it does seem iiNet are happy to answer questions sent directly to them. The account has also been used to broadcast news related to service downtime.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Moderate. Over half of the most recent 20 Tweets were direct responses to fellow Tweeters.

individuum

  • Date Joined: August 31st, 2008
  • Traction: Moderate. Individuum has managed to accumulate over 100 followers, which isn’t half bad for a niche financial company I hadn’t heard of before today.
  • Participation Style: Promotional. Individuum implements a number of marketing tactics via Twitter. Firstly, they promote new posts on their corporate blog. And secondly, they run competitions via Twitter. Thus far, they are the only Australian business I have seen execute promotions via Twitter. Despite the skew towards marketing activity, their participation doesn’t come across as solely self serving.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Moderate. Almost half of their most recent 20 Tweets were @ responses.

JetStar

  • Date Joined: January 20th, 2009
  • Traction: Low. The airline has less than 100 followers, but seems to be in the experimental phase of participation with less than 10 Tweets.
  • Participation Style: Broadcast. To this point Tweets have focused solely on fares/sales which is not likely to win them many fans in Twitter… unless they can provide unique offers to their followers in the style of Dell. Here’s an idea though… how unbelievably useful would real time flight information be via Twitter? If users could opt-in to Twitter updates for a single flight, after which their subscription expires, JetStar would suddenly have an extremely high value service for customers (Hat tip to @ianlyons for helping extend my thoughts in this area). Likewise, Connex could provide Twitter updates on train delays and cancellations for specific train lines. It may not improve their ridiculously bad service, but it may help me plan my day just a little bit better.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Non existent. JetStar have not engaged in a single conversation via Twitter.

Melbourne IT

  • Date Joined: December 2nd, 2008
  • Traction: Moderate considering participation to this stage. Melbourne IT have generated almost 100 followers without any real form of action, which shows the potential of the medium with a tech savvy audience.
  • Participation Style: Broadcast. Tweets to this point have spruiked offers, press releases and new services. Surely there’s an opportunity to create a help desk environment and aid customers with their technical problems via Twitter.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Low. Just one Tweet has been a direct response to a conversation started by another Tweeter.

Netregistry

  • Date Joined: September 2nd, 2008
  • Traction: Moderate. NetRegistry has accumulated over 100 followers, although I suspect they’re piggy backing off the awareness of Jonathon Crossfield (@Kimota), one of Australia’s higher profile marketing bloggers, and chief Tweeter for Netregistry.
  • Participation Style: Balanced self promotion. Jonathon implements a range of participation tactics within Twitter. The primary objective is the promotion of new articles on the Netregistry blog, which are shared via Twitter. However, this broadcast approach is balanced by sharing quality resources from third party sites. This tactic is often employed by marketing and social media experts within Twitter to ensure accusations of excessive self promotion do not eventuate.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Moderate. Jonathon is an experienced Tweeter, and therefore knows the importance of engaging with the community. Although recent activity has been closer to a broadcast style, historical behaviour is far closer to a 50/50 split between broadcast and real conversations.

Oxfam

  • Date Joined: April 13th, 2008
  • Traction: Very High. The Oxfam account is approaching the landmark of 1,000 followers. Charities continue to be popular on Twitter.
  • Participation Style: Primarily broadcast. Most Tweets are aimed at building awareness for the various causes Oxfam is promoting including sweatshop abolishment, ecosystem protection & Aboriginal affairs. Links point both to the Oxfam site and any other web properties hosting appropriate information.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Low. None of the most recent 20 Tweets were active conversations with members. However, historical behaviour does show minor levels of interaction with the community.

Rio Tinto

  • Date Joined: April 22nd, 2008
  • Hat Tip: Eric
  • Traction: Moderate. Rio Tinto has accumulated over 250 followers, which is relatively high in comparison to other brands. However, the result is modest given the significant advantage in brand awareness that Rio Tinto experience over many other organisations on the list.
  • Participation Style: Broadcast. Rio Tinto utilise Twitter as little more than a press room for their media releases. Indeed, almost all Tweets are link drops to content from the media release section of their corporate web site. The dry nature of their media releases means the only people likely to follow their Tweets are journalists and industry pundits.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Very low. Of the most recent 20 Tweets, just 1 was a direct response to a fellow Tweeter.

RMIT

  • Date Joined: June 1st, 2008
  • Traction: High. RMIT has generated more followers than many mainstream businesses, which is impressive for an educational institution.
  • Participation Style: Broadcast/Interactive. RMIT regularly broadcast university news via Twitter, as well as promoting events such as expo’s and festivals. Aside from the news broadcast, they also proactively monitor and respond to anyone mentioning RMIT in the Twitter-sphere. Is it a worry that RMIT manage Twitter better than most Australian businesses…?
  • Audience Engagement Rate: High. With proactive monitoring of the RMIT brand name, almost half of the 20 most recent Tweets were responses to fellow Tweeters.

RSPCA

  • Date Joined: February 11th, 2009
  • Traction: Moderate. In less than a month, the RSPCA has managed to attract almost a hundred followers. I’m sure this will grow over time as awareness spreads.
  • Participation Style: Random. Participation hasn’t seemed to serve any real purpose aside from advertising a couple of job vacancies within the organisation. Which is a shame because the aftermath of the recent Victorian bushfires has left many animals in need of care. Twitter could have been used to post pics of individual animals requiring adoption, thereby leveraging the massive wave of goodwill cascading through Twitter.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Moderate. Over a third of the RSPCA’s Tweets have been to fellow members, although most are simply thank you messages for following. The RSPCA is yet to utilise Twitter  for real conversations.

STA Travel

  • Date Joined: December 18th, 2008
  • Traction: Very High. The STA Travel account is closing in on 1,000 followers. Although admittedly, targeting the student demographic means Twitter penetration rates are far higher in their target audience.
  • Participation Style: Balanced self promotion. Other players in the travel industry take note! STA Travel does broadcast offer based Tweets regularly. But this promotional behaviour is balanced with other constructive participation styles, including linking to interesting third party content, posting photos & engaging with customers. See what acting like a human can achieve…
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Low. Of the most recent 20 Tweets, only two were actual conversations with fellow Tweeters. However, the historical rate does tend to be a little higher than this.

Telstra

  • Date Joined: September 24th, 2008
  • Traction: High. The BigPond Team has accumulated over 500 followers within 6 months of creating the account. However, I do suspect a fair proportion of those followers are social enthusiasts such as myself (keenly watching how a major corporate adopts the medium) rather than actual customers.
  • Participation Style: Customer support is clearly the name of the game, ala ComCast. The Telstra team seem to have Twitter alerts established for keywords such as ‘Telstra’ and ‘BigPond’. BigPond’s Twitter team then proactively contact customer’s complaining about the service. The short-term objective is problem resolution. The long-term objective is customer retention.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Very high. Of the most recent 20 Tweets, 16 were directly addressed to fellows Tweeters.

Tourism NSW

  • Date Joined: November 8th, 2008
  • Traction: Very High. The Tourism NSW account has accumulated almost 1,000 followers.
  • Participation Style: Broadcast & Interactive. The Tourism NSW team regularly use Twitter to send out links to new content on their site. However, participation is not limited to broadcast. It seems they have set up an impressive proactive monitoring processes. From what I can see they have monitoring set up on popular locations (Eg. Byron Bay) and are proactively connecting with people mentioning the destination, and providing content when relevant. Great work!
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Moderate. Of the last 20 Tweets, 10 were direct responses to other Tweeters, which is indicative of an organisation actively reaching out to members.

Tourism Queensland

  • Date Joined: October 25th, 2008
  • Traction: Amazing! The Tourism Queensland account has almost 3,000 followers. This is undoubtedly due to the roaring global success of their best job in the world campaign, which is clearly one of the best viral campaigns ever run from Australia. It will be interesting to see if the account continues to build momentum once the campaign concludes.
  • Participation Style: Interactive. Activity within Twitter focuses solely on the progress of the promotion. Many of the Tweets are dedicated to encouraging voting behaviour from their followers base. However, a healthy proportion of Tweets are also responses to people chatting about the promotion. Whoever is running the Tourism Queensland Twitter account certainly knows what they are doing.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Moderate. Exactly half of Tourism Queensland’s most recent 20 Tweets were responses to fellow Tweeters.

Tourism Western Australia

  • Date Joined: January 20th, 2009
  • Traction: High. Tourism Western Australia have attracted over 500 followers in a handful of months.
  • Participation Style: Broadcast. Tourism WA are not as progressive in their application of Twitter as their cohorts in Queensland & NSW. The account is predominantly used to promote offers and attractions within the State. On a positive note, they do seem to be involved in aiding @twitchhiker as he travels Australia to raise money for charity.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Low. Whilst they have engaged with twitchhiker, there is little other evidence of audience engagement.

Virgin Blue

  • Date Joined: July 30th, 2008
  • Traction: Moderate. Despite a fleeting attempt at using Twitter, Virgin Blue has attracted over 200 followers. Not bad given they only ever contributed 4 Tweets.
  • Participation Style: Broadcast. The few Tweets ever published were advertisements for sales/fares.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Non existent. While it’s hard to tell from such a limited implementation, it didn’t seem as if Virgin Blue were interested in interacting with fellow Tweeters.

Vodafone

  • Date Joined: December 17th, 2008
  • Traction: Moderate. Vodafone has attracted over 100 subscribers in a couple of months since creating the account.
  • Participation Style: Broadcast. Vodafone is using Twitter solely as a distribution channel for press releases, often linking directly to PDF media releases. Ugh. The type of news reported via Twitter includes Vodafone’s merger with Hutchison and quarterly sales results. It makes me wonder how many of their followers are employees, because I doubt many others would be interested in their Tweets.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Non existent. Vodafone has never entered into a two-way discussion with a fellow Tweeter.

Vogue

  • Date Joined: March 18th, 2009
  • Traction: Moderate. At the time of publishing the account was just a week old, yet Vogue has already accumulated over 200 followers. Clearly, Vogue has done some form of promotion of their Twitter account already.
  • Participation Style: It’s far too early to tell with just two Tweets. Both Tweets related to a fashion festival, with one linking to a video hosted on the Vogue web site.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Again, far too early to tell how Vogue will engage with their customers & audience.

Westpac

  • Date Joined: January 24th, 2009
  • Traction: Non existent. The Westpac account has just a handful of followers, which is unsurprising given they’ve only made a handful of Tweets. The most recent Tweet gives the impression that Westpac will begin actively using the account soon – “just working through a couple of things before getting this going“.
  • Participation Style: The name of the account (Westpac_help) indicates that Westpac will be taking the customer support route.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Too early to tell.

WWF

  • Date Joined: December 17th, 2008
  • Traction: Amazing. WWF has amassed almost 2,000 followers. See what a good cause can do.
  • Participation Style: Predominantly self promotional. But I guess that’s ok when we’re talking about global conservation. Twitter activity focuses on the promotion of current conservation issues. For example, almost all WWF’s recent Tweets are dedicated to the spreading the word on Earth Hour.
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Moderate. Of the most recent 20 Tweets, 5 were active conversations with a fellow Tweeter.

Zuji

  • Date Joined: October 11th, 2008
  • Hat Tip: Laurel
  • Traction: Low. Zuji has less than 100 followers.
  • Participation Style: Broadcast. Like JetStar & Virgin Blue, Zuji has used Twitter solely to blast their small follower base with offers. Yawn. Doesn’t seem as if anyone within the travel industry looks at their competitor’s activity to see what isn’t working… Perhaps even worse, all offers point users to Zuji’s home page rather than deep linking them to a specific offer page. Eek!
  • Audience Engagement Rate: Non existent. Like their travel industry partners, it seems Zuji has little interest in actually talking to customers.

And one final piece of insight that amused me. I noticed that both the AFL and NRL are on Twitter. However, I excluded both brands from the list as they are only ever likely to use the service to broadcast news. Interestingly, the AFL had almost 700 followers. The NRL had less than 50 followers. Which is proof once and for all that NRL supporters are unsophisticated neanderthals when compared to the average AFL fan…! :)

Be Sociable, Share!

{ 14 trackbacks }

Twitter whoring goes mainstream | Online Marketing Banter
March 8, 2009 at 10:51 am
Laurel Papworth- Social Network Strategy » Blog Archive » Ad:Tech Sydney - Twitter presentation
March 17, 2009 at 5:24 am
Updating the list of Aussie brands on Twitter | Online Marketing Banter
March 26, 2009 at 11:05 am
Aussie brands on Twitter « Where love is earned, not bought
March 31, 2009 at 1:22 am
Carving out instant niche rankings | SEO Scoop
April 1, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Guest post on SEO Scoop | Online Marketing Banter
April 2, 2009 at 2:16 am
Australian Companies and Twitter « Smart Selling Blog
April 4, 2009 at 1:31 am
Internet Company or Transitioning Company? - Behind Glass Walls
August 20, 2009 at 11:32 am
A case study in small business social media marketing | Online Marketing Banter
December 16, 2009 at 3:02 am
Busy, busy! « Kat Online
July 8, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Musing about Twitter. « Kat Online
July 8, 2010 at 5:16 pm
7 Easy Ways to Keep Your Twitter Followers Happy - Zhoom Marketing | Web design, Online Marketing and Google Adwords by Ciaran Mahoney
November 21, 2012 at 12:09 am
7 Easy Ways to Keep Your Twitter Followers Happy - Ciaran Mahoney
December 2, 2014 at 3:34 am
twitter analytics australia - Search Yours
January 8, 2015 at 11:11 pm

{ 58 comments… read them below or add one }

lucio ribeiro February 25, 2009 at 1:57 am

Hi James,
Oh man! You just did it!
great list, bookmarked on delicious!
I’ve got some Interesting position from @philjohnson on twitter and companies using it
“There’s a great business book called The Innovator’s Dilemma, by Clayton Christensen. The basic idea is that every once in a while a technology comes along that disrupts the established order.” Is it Twitter this disrupctive techonlogy?
Cheers
Lucio Ribeiro
@lucio_ribeiro

individuum February 25, 2009 at 2:36 am

You left us off, probably because we’re a new-ish brand and you’ve never heard of us :-)

We’re enjoying our Twitter experiment so far and are always keen to hear/read about how people and other businesses are getting the most out of it, so thanks for the list.

Cheers,

Marty
@individuum

(and also @votekatet and @martinjy)

Michael Halligan February 25, 2009 at 8:54 am

Hi James,
i’ve recently subscribed to your blog and am enjoying what you’re posting. I especially agree with this article, having experimented myself with Twitter only to conclude that it doesnt fit my company at this point in time.

On the other hand i’m just launching a Twitter campaign for a business that markets heavily in the US and have found it much more useful to date. Do you think it will get to a point in Australia where brands feel that they have to be on there?

Cheers,
Mick

James Duthie February 25, 2009 at 12:48 pm

@Lucio – Interesting thought. But I wouldn’t consider Twitter a technology that disrupts the order. I would classify the mobile phone and the Internet under that category, but not Twitter. I certainly hope for the sake of our society that a communication channel limited to 140 characters doesn’t redefine the way we communicate.

@Marty – Thanks for dropping by. I’ll be sure to add individuum to the list shortly. Would love to chat some time down the line to see how the experiment pans out.

@Michael – Thanks for subscribing. Glad you’re finding it useful. I’m not convinced Twitter will ever become compulsory for all Aussie brands. In fact, I don’t think social media itself will ever be a required marketing channel. If your audience isn’t there, it serves no purpose. Ultimately, businesses will follow customers. So if Twitter becomes a mainstream communications channel in Australia, businesses will embrace it. If not, they won’t bother…

Kimota February 25, 2009 at 7:53 pm

Thanks for this James – it is a fantastic article that appropriately assesses the approach of each. You’re right that finding a balance between ‘broadcasts’ and actual engagement is hard.

Because I have two accounts, I am interested to see which one becomes more effective in representing the business. Obviously my personal profile is more successful because it draws influence from my external activities as well and I have used it to discuss NR business when appropriate, but the NR account is great at acquiring new people – not as many as you think have piggy-backed from the kimota account but have probably latched onto the brand or found it through our business communications strategy.

Recently, using Twitter search to track all mentions of NR has allowed with me to engage directly with people either complaining about us or asking the Twitterverse on advice on a particular product. I’ve resolved a couple of large customers quickly in this way ad also encouraged others to brig their business to us and the beauty is it is all in a public forum so everyone gets to see how responsive and personable we are.

Started as merely an experiment, IO am now trying to find the resources to handle it better.

RMIT university February 26, 2009 at 2:54 am

Thank you for your kind words on RMIT and our tweets. Very much appreciated from all of us.

RMIT Interact team.
http://www.rmit.edu.au/interact

Mike February 27, 2009 at 1:28 am

Becks are also on there. Only just started but growing steadily : @uberselektor

nice list. thanks for compiling.

Mike.

Nathan Bush February 27, 2009 at 3:52 am

ahhh… a list! well done on thinking of one that hasn’t already been done – i like it. been following these guys for a couple of days and, surprisingly, found that telstra have been the most engaging. as for your afl/nrl observation – afl is popular with afl supporters as it reflects their game – fewer characters. BOOM TISH!

inspiredworlds February 28, 2009 at 1:14 am

nice list. most lists of twitter businesses or people to follow are merely a row of names and don’t discuss what they are doing (i.e. no analysis).

I also follow Atlassian – http://twitter.com/atlassian

It’s mostly upgrades/product updates/events. Atlassisan doesn’t do much customer service from this twitter account. I actually get my most of my Wiki customer service replies from http://twitter.com/mattnhodges (sales engineer) and http://twitter.com/ellenfeaheny (reseller)

If i have issues i just state them on twitter, and usually Atlassian staff, other users or 3rd party resellers will answer it.

The NRMA mag also has one, not sure if it qualifies:
http://twitter.com/MyWay2Go

James Duthie February 28, 2009 at 1:48 am

@Kimota – Thanks for the insight behind your usage. Always nice to hear it from the horse’s mouth. Would be really interesting to do an interview down the line to discuss your experiences. It’s interesting that you’ve chosen to keep your personal and business accounts separate. There was an interesting article on Ad Age recently discussing Scott Monty’s account, and the merging lines of business/personal usage:

http://adage.com/digitalnext/post?article_id=134800

Personally, I think I’d like to keep mine separate though as I do like to joke round on Twitter now and then in a manner that may not appropriate for a business account.

@RMIT – No problems. It’s my pleasure.

@Mike – Thanks for the Becks tip. I’ll add them to the list shortly.

@ Nathan – I’m not a fan of lists. But this seemed an obvious and useful one that I couldn’t see in existence. And I must say, I was surprised to see so few NRL fans on Twitter. I thought the brevity of conversation would suit the average NRL fan given their severe limitation in vocabulary… :)

@Matt – Thanks for adding Atlassian to the list. Hadn’t even heard of the company to be honest, but I’ll be sure to add them soon.

robynemu February 28, 2009 at 7:14 pm

@Matt thanks for remembering us!

James, great post, I haven’t seen one listing Australian businesses before, but there are definitely ones that list Australian CEOs that twitter
http://digitalministry.com/AU/articles/635/Australian+CEOs+that+Twitter/1

I work at Atlassian and just wanted to add that we talked long and hard about how we were going to use the Atlassian twitter account. In fact we even talked about not setting one up at all, especially as a lot of our staff have their own accounts.
We came to the decision that we would do it as long as it didn’t pretend to be a ‘real person’, which means that the Atlassian twitter account serves as more of a notification service. Which means that you’ll find a lot of our customer relation type things over twitter are actually done from employees individual accounts rather than the Atlassian account. We also have a great network of partners and customers who respond to general queries.
We actually have a few different twitter accounts that we use for different aspects of our business:
* http://twitter.com/atlassiansummit gives updates about our upcoming user conference in SF
* http://twitter.com/jirastudio provides status details about our hosted offering to customers
* http://twitter.com/atlassian is used to provide updates from our blogs and information about product releases

Other Aussie businesses that we work with who are using twitter that I know about are:
Customware http://twitter.com/customware
Pollenizer http://twitter.com/pollenizer
Earth Hour htp://twitter.com/earthhour (don’t know if that counts, its more of a campaign than a business)

Oh, and you can also get me personally over at http://www.twitter.com/robynemu. More than happy to answer any questions about how we use twitter.

inspiredworlds March 1, 2009 at 10:40 am

@james

you know what the problem with the jetstar twitter is, there’s a fake one out there called jetstar with like 2 followers. its quite possible that could be someone’s nickname, etc… but i reckon there are a lot of people doing twitter squatting on account names.

also, atlassian and next have a relationship. brett jackson, former head of product management spoke at our last sydney breakfast event. and i’ve been using two of their products, Confluence and JIRA.

Chris Anderson March 1, 2009 at 1:03 pm

I’ve gotta be honest, I still don’t see the real point behind Twitter – why do you need to let random people know what you’re doing all the time?

But then again, I’m an engineer, not an IT person, so maybe it’s just not my world! :P

I do find it interesting how it seems to be taking off though. I guess time will tell if it’s really something to get excited about.

Keep up the good work cuz!

Eric March 4, 2009 at 10:55 pm

Another I’ve been watching recently is Rio Tinto: http://twitter.com/riotinto

200+ followers, 69 updates, since Apr 22nd, 2008

A mix of media release pimping, passing comments, replies to tweeters, and links to places other than their own web assets (mostly news stories featuring them, natch).

Kimota March 12, 2009 at 5:43 am

You’re more than welcome to talk to me about my Twitter usage anytime – and the benefits of keeping the brand and personal accounts seperate. It was deliberate and they do serve different functions, though not what you might think.

Ann Nolan, founder of www.babysitterdirectory.com.au March 17, 2009 at 1:08 am

Hi James – great article and well done on humbly renouncing your distaste :-).

I’ve been on Twitter for a few months now and while I enjoy it have to say I’m not convinced its a marketing channel as opposed to a conversation channel.

I believe that many of the big companies mainly the media companies haven’t fully copped onto this and just post their headlines and do not interact with you the “follower”.They don’t reply to your tweets or DM.

Then we have the @sirdickbranson ‘pretending’ to be Branson when in fact you kind of know its really just a PR person masquerading as him (cant imagine richard having the time to DM and tweet over 300,00 odd followers a day but I could be wrong!).

As to using twitter for conversation marketing I think this can be done without annoying followers buts its a difficult balancing act. You need to give and receive and a courtesy of course is to acknowledge when you are engaging in blatant marketing with the good old use of #.

Speaking of which you may want to add my business to the list above :-)

@babysitterdirec

Mozo March 20, 2009 at 3:56 am

Hi James

We’re a recently launched Oz financial comparison website that has been experimenting with twitter for a few months now: http://twitter.com/mozo_au

Admittedly it took us a while to work out what we were doing on there, and it’s definitely still a learning experience! That said we’ve found it a great way to connect with industry influencers and early adopters – people who can help to spread the word about Mozo.

We’re about to take the next step and broadcast our twitter feed to the wider public by promoting it on our site etc, something we didn’t feel comfortable with doing while we were in ‘learning mode’. Will be interesting to see how that goes.

Cheers
Kirsty
@mozo_au

Michael Specht March 29, 2009 at 11:06 pm

This is going to be very hard to get a complete list as there are just so many companies.

But then what are you classifying as a company for example ABC is a government entity that has been online for a while across various accounts, some interactive others not so. I know you don’t want to include organisation that re-boardcast but the interactive accounts should be included.

Then you have 2Vouch, Workforce Guardian, Saasu, Five Senses, Westpac, Salvos, and now Connex Melbourne a small restaurant in Melbourne Misty’s Diner, Rentoid, Grad Connection, Teusner Wine, Job Adder, Yarra Valley the list goes on and on. There are 100′s (if not 1000′s) of Aussie companies using Twitter.

CBS Interactive March 30, 2009 at 3:30 am

Hi James,

We’re from CBS Interactive and would greatly appreciate it if you could update the list to include our own Australian brands on Twitter:

CNET Australia: http://twitter.com/cnetaustralia
Gamespot AU: http://twitter.com/GameSpot_AU
BNET AU: http://twitter.com/bnetaustralia
Tv.com Australia: http://twitter.com/TVdotcomAU
ZDNet Australia: http://twitter.com/zdnetaustralia

Thanks in advance.

James Duthie March 30, 2009 at 9:26 am

Thanks for all the feedback guys. This is a little overwhelming and it may well be difficult to manage as Michael pointed out. A wiki seems like a necessity sometime in the future. Although introducing a Wiki will eliminate the analytical element.

I’ll endeavor to keep the list updated often.

Ian Lyons May 21, 2009 at 4:00 am

Hey James,

I’ve tried most of the wikis out there and find that Google Sites is the easiest to use for most people – therefore great as a social collaboration tool.

The other option is to move this to a Google spreadsheet like the one that exists for musicians. It’s collaborative, has rollback functionality, alerts and you can embed it into this page.

Cheers,
Ian

Paul McKeon July 6, 2009 at 7:33 am

Thought I might belatedly drop the name of my law firm. We’ve been twittering as @deacons since April 08. Cheers!

Lisa Smith July 10, 2009 at 6:39 am

Hi, I’m doing the same as Paul, I’ve been on twitter for several months personally as @lisacsmith4 but it’s been interesting watching two brands I have started on twitter, both Aussie companies through and through – @anreps (sell your home your way) and @geewizauctions (a new player in the real estate industry – online auctions to be precise).

I think the fact that I used a photo of a woman on geewiz and a logo on anreps possibly explains the difference in followers, nearly double for the young lady!! I wasn’t surprised, people like to think there is a person behind the computer.

Clayton Cook July 31, 2009 at 1:49 am

hmmmmm – I’ve always kept up-to-date with information technology and marketing trends. One of my favourite topics is Branding. I’ve developed a few of my own successfully. I’m just not convinced with Twitter. I am just not sure how people have time for it. While we have actively used LinkedIN and Facebook, etc as business experiments, I haven’t had any ‘real’ positive feedback from ‘BUSINESS’. 200 followers or 1000 doesn’t sound a very good return on investment to me. I couldn’t justify allocating much time at all to any staff to keep a Twitter account active at this stage.
I personally think it to be a FAD and society will have moved on within 18months.
I will continue to watch with interest though.

James Deck November 10, 2009 at 12:33 am

Nine months later, it is very interesting to see how these forward thinking Aussie companies have gone with Twitter.

They run the gamut from JetStar’s 5,411 followers to Westpac still having that February message referenced in your post.

sarah j November 16, 2009 at 11:39 am

http://twitter.com/nrl – you should probably link to the correct NRL twitter account. Which actually has more than the AFL. You are correct though it is purly broadcast.

There has been some fence siting by Australian sports bodies due to fficial Sports brands in the US/UK being burnt with agressive social media strategies as well as a few minor disastors in both cricket and NRL here. It was a hot topic of conversation at a conference recently, the NRL’s New Media Manager was present – internal change management needed to occur before the strategy was embraced by a very traditional senior managment. She along with a new PR Manager have been given a little free reign to employ some strategies for 2010. Watch this space….

Santosh Shukla May 11, 2010 at 6:41 pm

Thanks James. Twitter lists are my favorites. I created one to track the Sales2.0 leaders. That is http://twitter.com/skshukla/sales2-0

That is one of the many tips that I use for getting the most out of social media without spending too much time. The others can be found at http://blog.insideview.com/2010/05/02/investing-too-much-time-on-social-media-how-to-boost-your-roi

Www la refer org spip recherche php3 recherche tadalafil April 10, 2013 at 3:45 am

nainwpomjofnbslfujohcboufs, Vardenafil vs tadalafil effectiveness, EKAfwLu, [url=http://www.talkinghandsasl.com/]Tadalafil soft[/url], VNosRuH, http://www.talkinghandsasl.com/ Pulmonary arterial hypertension tadalafil, eCyLspQ.

Patty March 26, 2014 at 12:37 am

My brother recommended I might like this blog. He was
once totally right. This post actually made my day. You cann’t believe simply how much time I had spent for this info!
Thanks!

bingo August 25, 2014 at 8:10 pm

magnificent put up, very informative. I’m wondering why the opposite specialists of this
sector don’t understand this. You should continue your writing.

I’m confident, you’ve a huge readers’ base already!

bingo September 3, 2014 at 10:43 pm

Great article. I’m dealing with many of these issues as well..

juegosfrivgames.com.co September 10, 2014 at 11:39 am

I drop a comment whenever I appreciate a article on a site or I
have something to contribute to the discussion. Usually it is triggered by the fire communicated in the post I browsed.
And on this post Australian businesses and brands on Twitter | Online Marketing Banter.
I was excited enough to post a thought ;) I actually do have 2 questions for you if you don’t mind.
Could it be only me or do some of the responses appear as if they are left by brain dead
visitors? :-P And, if you are writing on other
social sites, I’d like to follow everything fresh you have
to post. Could you list every one of your communal pages like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?

gratis bingospel September 13, 2014 at 1:57 am

Hello there! Do you know if they make any plugins to help with SEO?
I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted
keywords but I’m not seeing very good results.
If you know of any please share. Thank you!

http://Opciones-binarias.co October 3, 2014 at 10:31 pm

Wanting to do something with savings that I have accumulated over the years,
I have spent hours reading about Peer 2 Peer lending strategies and even longer researching
Forex Robots. Disabling this setting has caused some valid sites to simply not
work properly. rb from the DBI file and place it in C:\ruby\lib\ruby\site_ruby\1.

ice age adventures cheats android October 9, 2014 at 8:57 am

You could certainly see your enthusiasm in the work you write.
The arena hopes for even more passionate writers like you who are not afraid
to say how they believe. All the time follow your heart.

insurance coverage providers October 23, 2014 at 12:23 pm

Hey there I am so thrilled I found your blog page, I
really found you by mistake, while I was researching on Aol
for something else, Anyhow I am here now and would just like to say thank you for a incredible post and a all round thrilling blog (I
also love the theme/design), I don’t have
time to look over it all at the minute but I have bookmarked it and also added your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back
to read much more, Please do keep up the superb jo.

Bethany January 28, 2015 at 12:31 pm

Hi, this weekend iis pleasant in support of me, ass this moment i aam reading this fantastic informative
post here aat my residence.

pay someone to do my essay examples recipe February 3, 2015 at 8:26 pm

Attractive element of content. I simply stumbled upon your
web site and in accession capital to assert that I acquire actually enjoyed account your blog posts.
Anyway I will be subscribing to your augment or even I fulfillment you
get admission to consistently quickly.

Booker February 7, 2015 at 9:12 pm

class isn’t nearly enough to maintain the cardiovascular system, much less keep an overall healthy bodyweight.
Just like the other i – Phone pedometer apps, all you need to do is to put this app in your pocket
and start running or walking. By gradually lowering the
time period the speed is increased producing speedier
jogging results.

??????? February 8, 2015 at 9:36 pm

?????????????? ???? ??
??? ??????????????????????????????

anwalt arbeitsrecht münchen schwabing March 12, 2015 at 3:09 pm

Über pass away Prozesskostenhilfe können die Kosten für das Gericht und
den eigenen Anwalt für einen Gerichtsprozess ganz oder teilweise übernommen werden.

Ny.tromsdalshavna.no May 26, 2015 at 6:49 pm

%first_paragraphIt is the responsibility of the optometrist to make examinations, diagnoses and prescriptions for those who are suffering with eye problems and disorders. Optometrists, also referred to as doctors of optometry, are one of the main providers of eye care.

It is what he uses to read so that as he gets a hold of a novel, he would be able to enter into that world painted by the writer. The sense of sight is probably the most important or most valued senses in a man?s body. It is what one uses to look around so that he does not bump into things. That is why optometrists are essential in the world. It is what he needs to read a contract so that he is not defrauded by anyone. They are the people educated and trained so that everybody would have perfect sight that is required do all those mentioned above, and more. It is what he needs to see the beauty and the ugly parts of the world and appreciate the balance of the same. But how will he be able to do all these if his vision is impaired?

The best thing is to be aware about the entire aspects related to applying and getting the scholarship money. This amount can help you defray the education cost to some extent. Once you know what amount you are going to get and when, it is important you learn about the restrictions levied on using the award money of government of Alberta graduate fellowship.

These doctors have advanced specialization and perform surgical treatment of macular degeneration. One fact you may not know is that in nearly every state, optometrists can prescribe oral medications. Vitreo-retinal surgeons are experts in disorders of the vitreous, retina, and macula. A more specialized type of eye doctor is a vitreo-retinal surgeon. They can perform treatment such as laser therapy and photodynamic laser therapy upon a patient with advanced macular degeneration. Once licensed, optometrist are given the acronym OD for doctor of optometry.

So, now let me tell you about some very good RV campgrounds and parks which can easily be found here. I am sure they would surely provide you the best facilities and amenities. Near to this place you can easily locate various fine dining restaurants and shops. It is located in 23 kilometers from Banff and is surrounded by outstanding natural beauty and magnificent scenery. Spring Creek RV Campground
This is a very attractive RV campground which provides you all the modern facilities and amenities.

Such brushes are driven by batteries and removes plaque quite effectively. Brushing properly
Several types of tooth brushes are used to remove plaque from tooth surface. Electric tooth brushes are great way of improving your brushing technique.

By having your infant check early you can not only see if there are any visual problems but it is to make sure that the development of your child’s eyesight is on the right track. Children for example need to have a visual check from birth or at least when they reach 6 months of age.

There is no better place to buy a car that is well-equipped with the right number of cars and services than car dealerships. Their wide inventory of brand new and used cars caters to all types of clients, with prices of cars ranging from cheap to expensive.

Eye doctors play an important in our society. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide have eye diseases or conditions and the number is growing as our population increases and ages. While many people think of eye exams and prescriptions for glasses or contacts when they think of eye doctors, these doctors treat patients with a wide range of medical conditions including cataracks, glaucoma, macular degeneration, and other retinal diseases. optometrist comparison will help you understand the differences in these types of doctors. An ophthalmologist vs.

This will save you time when you need the services of Lethbridge equipment rentals in future. Furthermore, it is always advisable to find out all the equipment you might need during the course of the construction and consider Lethbridge equipment rentals that have them.

For admission in optometry school, you must pass the Optometry Admission Test. Majority of students joining an optometry course must have a bachelor’s degree. Accredited optometry curriculum normally takes 4 years of study to finish. In order to be accepted in the program, at least three years of pre-optometric learning is required.

However, you can see everything caused to teeth are done by plaque. Each of above problems are subject to treatment once they start appearing. You have to visit a dentist to get rid of tooth issues. You can visit official website of Lethbridge Dentists for more information.

Whether it?s receiving energy through the crude oil harvested there or benefitting from the thriving commodity exchange market in North America, the oil sands are keeping Canada a player in the world energy market. No matter if you live near the Alberta oil sands or not, chances are you are benefitting from the natural resources being harvested there.%

Fc Barcelona Jersey Kids Messi Jerseys June 5, 2015 at 10:01 am

Hello I am so thrilled I found your site,
I really found you by error, while I was looking on Yahoo for something else, Nonetheless
I am here now and would just like to say many thanks for
a tremendous post and a all round thrilling blog (I also love the theme/design), I don’t have time to
look over it all at the moment but I have saved it and also added your RSS feeds, so
when I have time I will be back to read much more, Please do keep up the awesome work.

Ernestine August 5, 2015 at 7:10 pm

Prison staff have also noticed that gardening therapy improves
the social interaction of the inmates, in addition to improving
mutual understanding amongst project employees and prisoners who shared outside situations of perform.

www.rdatoolkit.org August 19, 2015 at 11:40 pm

Do this for eight months straight and the bank will absolutely switch your secured card,
to be an unsecured card.

Jean October 11, 2015 at 9:52 am

DMAE: This organic brain-protective antioxidant
promotes healthful neuron transmission and is identified in brain supplements for memory, mood and
concentrate.

totally free psychic readings October 19, 2015 at 4:15 am

I just could not leave your astrology site prior to suggesting that I extremely loved the standard information a person supply on your
guests? Is gonna be back regularly in order to investigate cross-check new posts

Leroy November 21, 2015 at 11:57 pm

As with most contemporary sewing machines,
the Brother also has the capacity to generate adjustable stitch lengths.

khocinfo November 26, 2015 at 6:52 pm

Black Butt Tube report Big Cock Tube report PAWG Tube
report Ebony BBW Tube report Gay Black Male Tube report Ebony Lesbian Tube report Crossdressing
Tube report Flasher Tube report Large Tits Tube report Booty
Tube report Shemale Fucks Guy Tube report Mature Tube report Lesbian Mother Tube report Mature
BBW Tube report Pure Boobs Tube report Asslick Tube report Face Sitting Tube
report Outdated Man Tube report Latina Tube report Desi Tube
report Anal Casting Tube report Femdom Tube report Lesbian Seduce Tube report Strap-on Lesbian Tube report Lesbian Asslick Tube report Mother Handjob Tube report Busty Asian Tube report Cum In Mouth Tube report Spouse Tube report Saggy Tits Tube report Russian Mature Tube report Caught Masturbating
Tube report Anal Pain Tube report Mature Lesbian Tube
report Massive Pussy Tube report Massive Clit Tube report SSBBW Tube report

advantages of web hosting December 1, 2015 at 4:46 am

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about micro blogging.
Regards

Leave a Comment

Previous post:

Next post: