As Digiday has made a habit of documenting, brands just tweet the darnedest things — and by darnedest we mean desperate, unfunny and nonsensical. Turns out we aren’t the only ones keeping tabs on brands’ social media missteps. First there was the Real Time Marketing Sucks Tumblr. Now there’s a Twitter account you can follow to keep up to date on horrible corporate tweets: Your Tweets Are Bad (@urtweetsrbad). Its sole purpose is to retweet bizarre brand tweets.
Digiday reached out to the anonymous industry tweeter to talk about bad brand Twitter tactics and when we can finally say RIP to requests for RTs. Some excerpts:
What made you decide to start tweeting as @urtweetsrbad?
As you might have guessed, I do social media-related stuff. I’ve been working in marketing/advertising for about five years. I wish I could say that it started as a one-person crusade to improve brand tweets, but the truth is that I was home sick from work and bored. I mostly started it to amuse myself.
Out of all of the bad brand Twitter tactics, which one is the worst?
My least favorites are “RT if…” and fake holidays, like apparently today is National Chocolate Day and yesterday was National Mother-In-Law Day. Oh, and terrible real-time marketing. There are also one or two brands in particular that seem to just rip graphics of inspirational quotes off of Pinterest or Google Image Search, which is aggravatingly lazy. And, of course, brands wishing you a happy (insert day of the week). I guess I hate a lot of tactics.
Why did Walmart block you? Just for retweeting? Seems extreme.
I guess they didn’t appreciate the attention. I didn’t do anything other than retweet them once or twice. I guess I can’t really say I blame them, though.
Is there hope? Can brands get better at social?
I think there are lots of brands doing really cool things. We can’t all be Starbucks, but I think we can at least hold ourselves to higher creative standards than tweeting “#TGIF” every Friday.
What’s your goal with this Twitter account?
Inspire some social media managers or agency creatives to be just a little less lazy. Or make people laugh, sigh or roll their eyes.
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