I’m sure that at some point, we’ve all held a dictionary in our hands. While I don’t think of fun and excitement when I think about the dictionary, Merriam-Webster is doing their best to change that.
I don’t currently own a dictionary, and probably haven’t since I was in elementary school. While I don’t have an interest in changing that anytime soon, the Twitter account for Merriam-Webster still struck my interest. They’ve managed to take something as boring and predictable as the dictionary, and given it flair. While they also have an Instagram, Youtube, and Facebook presence, for the sake of this article we’ll be focusing on their Twitter account since it’s the most successful.
Universally, one of the biggest struggles for big companies when it comes to social media is becoming relatable to their audience. In short, being relatable makes companies feel more “human” and helps connect them to their audience. Merriam-Webster has achieved relatability through a very active Twitter presence. They post tweets several times a day, and often add GIFs and pop-culture references to keep things interesting and engaging.
For example, here’s a great post where they chose to use a GIF from Schitt’s Creek (a popular Netflix series) to introduce one of the words they’ve added to the dictionary.
The biggest thing lacking from their social media is an effort to engage in the comment section of their posts. If they chose to respond to comments, they could take the nine comments seen above and turn that into eighteen while also building better relationships with their followers.
Overall, the social media presence for Merriam-Webster is impressive. They’re working with a product that isn’t typically exciting and creating a buzz around it. Their efforts put into becoming relatable are paying off, they have almost a million Twitter followers. If they work on engaging with their audience better, I think they could build something rather incredible. Would you have ever thought to look up Merriam-Webster on social media?
Want to check out some other big brands doing a great job with their social media game? Find more here: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-best-brands
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 