How Paddy Power stands out from its rivals on Twitter

Betting sites know the importance of keeping up with the latest sports updates and immediately informing their fans about them, but what is it that really makes a site stand out from the rest through its social presence?

Paddy Power has created an impressive social buzz during the past years, reaching 575k followers on Twitter, which makes the biggest audience of a betting site in UK.

In order to understand its Twitter presence even more, we decided to find out how its actual tweets stand out from competitor Ladbrokes.

How Ladbrokes uses Twitter

Ladbrokes has 170k followers on Twitter and uses the immediacy of the platform to share real-time updates and promote their latest offers.

Many of the tweets include a GIF to add a humorous aspect to their content, while it also occasionally creates video content, like this vine that was also added on its Twitter account.

Beat Man Utd
Beat Dortmund

Into the Europa League semi-final! #LFC https://t.co/TWiKI7ApOI

— Ladbrokes (@Ladbrokes) April 14, 2016

Ladbrokes understands how Twitter works and creates tweets that combine the right balance of “infotainment” to its real-time updates, while it also seems to track well the most trending hashtags to incorporate them to its relevant tweets.

Nostalgia

It’s an effective strategy to appeal to the emotion on social media, especially when it has to do with nostalgic moments from the past and this is also true for sports.

This leads to an increased engagement, which proves why #tbt posts are usually very popular  among brands.

Would you rather?

Ladbrokes features the hashtag #WouldYouRather to create polls among sports fans, encouraging them to retweet or like the specific post to choose the winner of the battle. This is a quick way to boost engagement and it seems to work in many cases.

Creating contests

Users love rewards and that’s why most brands host (Read more...) on their social accounts from time to time. Ladbrokes asked its followers to retweet the contest and use the specific hashtag for a chance to win, which led to another quick boost of engagement.

Promoting offers

Ladbrokes has created a different account for its promoted content, although it still retweets the most important offers, in order to maintain the business aspect of the site to its Twitter presence.

Humor

As Ladbrokes monitors the trending hashtags in the sports industry, it also knows which topics are more suitable for a humorous post.

These types of posts tend to lead to increased engagement, as users appreciate the casual side of a brand, feeling that they can easily relate to it.

How about engagement?

A closer look at Ladbrokes’ tweets shows that most of the tweets tend to receive an average of five to 15 retweets, with this number increasing in contests, or posts asking for retweets and likes.

As a retweet may be a (basic) indication of a tweet’s success (as it increases the engagement and it proves that these users liked this post enough to share it on their feeds), Ladbrokes doesn’t seem to have the engagement it could achieve, judging by the number of followers, the used hashtag and the content it creates.

Despite the solid Twitter strategy that already has the right mix of real-time updates, humor, promotion, and nostalgia, Ladbrokes seems to lack the uniqueness that will further boost its presence on Twitter.

Users have become demanding and they are seeking for the additional creativity that will make them reply, like, retweet with no second thought.

Here’s how Paddy Power achieved it.

How Paddy Power uses Twitter

Paddy Power numbers 575k followers on Twitter and this makes it the biggest betting site in UK in terms of Twitter followers, with its content being effective, whether it’s a funny image, or a provocative tweet.

Paddy Power uses Twitter to keep its followers up-to-date, while it also promotes its offers, its graphs, its blog posts, and it certainly loves using GIFs and funny images and even sharing irrelevant tweets. The number of tweets posted each day is impressive (and it’s close to be considered spammy), but the engagement of its followers rewards its effort on Twitter.

Not everyone would agree with Paddy Power’s strategy, but still, its effectiveness is undeniable. Here are some examples of the tweets:

Humour

Paddy Power got popular for its humorous (and oddly unique) content, which may range from hilarious to provocative tweets.

Most of the time, the humour is very appealing to its audience and it leads to numerous likes and retweets, building the brand’s Twitter presence.

Testing provocative content

Paddy Power doesn’t seem to be afraid of provocative content, whether it’s an “innocent” tweet, like the first one, or one meant to test the audience’s reactions.

Paddy Power seems quite consistent in posting tweets that cannot go unnoticed and users react either positively, relating to the bold humor, or negatively, complaining for the offensive post.

Real-time updates

Even when posting real-time updates, Paddy Power still stands out with its unique content and the tweets that reflect the brand’s personality, always posting in the way a sports fan would think at that exact moment.

Thinking like a human, not a brand

It’s the ability to understand the target audience that makes Paddy Power popular to such a large audience, as it seems to post more like a sports fan and less than a brand and this brings it closer to the right audience.

Engagement is easier when your followers feel they can relate to your content and this cannot always be achieved with a tweet that lacks creativity.

Creating images

Paddy Power creates relevant images from time to time to comment on recent news and these tweets seem to be among their most popular ones, as they reflect the humor that followers expect from the brand.

“Haters gonna hate” turns into a strategy

A very provocative tweet by Paddy Power led to many complaints from the brand’s followers, which resulted in another tweet, clarifying how Paddy Power feels about the complaints:

Paddy Power proves that it is not affected by the “haters” and it actually expects these reactions when creating such tweets, as they lead to an impressive engagement.

Seeking attention

It’s not bad to seek for attention, even from the least expected people (without necessarily expecting a reply back).

The thought of mentioning Kanye West, knowing that he has 21.7 million followers, led to one of their most popular tweets recently, so this may be considered another successful tweet.

How is the engagement?

All the examples above indicate the impressive engagement Paddy Power achieves on Twitter, with users commenting, liking and retweeting with no second thought.

It’s the psychological trigger of appealing to the immediate reaction with the tweets, whether they are funny or provocative, leading to an engagement rate that many brands would admire. Even the most irrelevant tweet has its own great engagement and of course, Paddy Power is ready to reply to followers mentioning that this tweet has nothing to do with the site:

Finally, this tweet sums up their Twitter strategy (and its effectiveness in terms of engagement):

Should you be provocative to stand out on Twitter?

Paddy Power and its Twitter strategy may serve as a great case study on how to create a bold presence without being afraid of the negative buzz, as it is still considered a buzz around your brand that boosts your engagement and makes your presence memorable. This may not always lead to a positively memorable experience, but as you become aware of the consequences and keep creating content consistently, then you learn how to deal with any reaction.

It’s not the provocative content that is suggested as the solution to the missing engagement though, but rather the authenticity that every brand should adopt on social media. Interesting, engaging and authentic content is the beginning to an appealing and effective Twitter presence.

Interested in learning more about Paddy Power’s marketing strategy? Don’t miss Richard Harris, Head of Online Marketing for Paddy Power in Shift London on May 24-25. Register today!

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