We have compiled a list of tweets (or Twitter campaigns) run by businesses or celebrities to leverage Twitter for commerce, public relations and lead generation.

These examples can be very useful to digital marketers or an in-house digital marketing team, to help set up Twitter campaigns for their businesses or customers.

1.Starbucks – give away free stuff on special occasions to build PR

On Veterans Day, 11 November, Starbucks tweeted that they were giving away a tall brewed coffee to veterans, active duty military men and women, and active duty spouses, with a #Thankavet hashtag and a link to their web page dedicated to veterans.

This good gesture was hugely appreciated by the Twitterati and was Retweeted and favourited over 4,000 and 3,000 times respectively. It surely drove high traffic to the attached link too.

2.Pizza Hut – time-bound offers drive attention and feedback

Pizza Hut, with over 600,000 followers, actively runs time-bound exclusive competitions on Twitter. On one such occasion this resulted in over 400 retweets and 300 favorites, in addition to loads of feedback from their customers.

3.Ticketmaster – Celebrities Sell

Katy Parry tweeted her UK tour dates and a link to tickets on Ticketmaster. The tweet has gone viral with around 5,000 retweets and favorites and tickets at Ticketmaster were sold out within minutes!

4.American Express – Make it real time and conversational

American express is experimenting with real Twitter commerce where users can tweet to ask for deals for their favorite brands! The concept is gaining momentum and over 1m people used this tool to request deals for their favorites brands!

Takeaway for businesses

Through these examples, the idea is to demonstrate to businesses or brands that there are various ways to get traction on Twitter, such as give away free stuff, or offer exclusive deals and then allow users to transact via or on Twitter. Not all the above techniques fit every businesses, but the business can do some analysis based on their products and services to see what they can offer for free or exclusively, and then run campaigns as above to get the most out of Twitter!