When Twitter first burst on to the social media scene, no one could imagine the power of Twitter as a news source, especially for brand engagement. The social media team decided to experiment with the platform early on by linking back to the PlayStation.Blog. The team quickly learned from early experiences and began to be more selective about what was published on @PlayStation, similar to what was implemented on Facebook. This, of course drove steady growth, as they produced more carefully crafted posts. As a result, @PlayStation saw tremendous growth and the team was highly successful in engaging with fans through scheduled and geo-targeted content output and news updates. PlayStation’s Twitter presence has grown steadily since its launch in 2007 and grew 125% within the span of 2013. With approximately 3.5 million followers, the feed became a valuable tool for gamers to learn the latest information as PS4’s launch drew closer. Twitter was used to communicate and spread information to the gaming community, The social media team at PlayStation took an active role in monitoring Twitter during the launch activities of the PS4, and took time to answer fan questions, retweet fan comments that brought value to other gamers, and curated Twitter questions for an official PS4 FAQ as well as crowdsourced game-focused interviews. The PS4 launch hashtags (#PS4, #GreatnessAwaits, #PS4Share, #PS4Live, #4ThePlayers, #PerfectDay) drew a total of 945,000 mentions by fans in November 2013 alone, trending in global and US regions. The PlayStation Twitter handle sent over 150 tweets, all carefully vetted and intended to provide value to gamers, during the PS4 launch in November 2013 and resulted in over 79,000 retweets from fans across the world.Objectives PlayStation’s Social Media team is driven to curate the best and most engaging content across PlayStation and its partner’s channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.). The Twitter page (www.twitter.com/PlayStation), which has more than 3.2 followers, was created primarily to stimulate valuable feedback from fans and to engage the PlayStation nation through highlighting games and content, and to also crowd source community content such as game tips and questions that come from the gaming community. Twitter is a great source for PlayStation to update the gaming community with the most up-to-date news and digital content and the social media team has taken full advantage of utilizing PlayStation’s Twitter handle, @PlayStation. Feedback from fans is vital to PlayStation and Twitter is just one channel the social media team utilizes to listen to gamers and help inform internal decision making processes to bring the best gaming experiences to the gaming community. The social media team values all questions and comments, especially “Retweets," which showcases the powerful engagement of PlayStation twitter followers. @PlayStation allows PlayStation to focus on gamers and is a great tool to use in ensuring we remain true to gamers. Strategy While the PlayStation.Blog serves as the central hub where news from all social channels point, PlayStation’s Twitter page is a strong tool for communicating and spreading information to the gaming community. The social media team aims to share the very best content through @PlayStation as a main news hub, which is updated throughout each day as news hits. Twitter has exponentially grown in recent years and is now one of the most trafficked and most engaged social media networks, which allows the team to use it as a primary channel for the most up-to-date news. Fans are eager to know what’s happening with PlayStation and want to share news with their friends and followers. Twitter enables us to engage with our fans in this way while also allowing us to link readers back to the PlayStation.Blog, our main news source hub. Tactics The social media team is highly motivated to engage fans with the very best content and follow a basic rule of thumb to focus on quality over quantity. PlayStation is for gamers and in order to bring fans the most immersive and engaging experiences, the social media team knows that, first and foremost, we have to share the latest and greatest news and content from PlayStation with fans. In order to do so, the team takes a mostly organic approach when engaging fans on Twitter and other PlayStation social media channels, including Facebook. The team only selects paid media surrounding major events, of which is very miniscule. The primary focus is to stay true to fans and the best way to do that is to engage creatively and with authenticity. To make @PlayStation a primary engaging social media tool, the social media team took careful analysis of past engagement numbers and decided to disengage topics that did not resonate with the brand or engage with fans. The team wanted to use @PlayStation as a highly engaging tool to share the latest news with PlayStation fans and took measures to make lasting improvements that lead to the popularity of the page to date. Once engagement was strong and healthy on Twitter, the team began Geo-targeting to help build more engagement with fans across the nation. Now @PlayStation has more than 3.2 million followers and continues to grow as the brand continues to evolve with the best place to play. Execution When Twitter first burst on to the social media scene, no one could imagine the power of Twitter as a news source, especially for brand engagement. The social media team decided to experiment with the platform early on by linking back to the PlayStation.Blog. The team quickly learned from early experiences and began to be more selective about what was published on @PlayStation, similar to what was implemented on Facebook. This, of course drove steady growth, as they produced more carefully crafted posts. As a result, @PlayStation saw tremendous growth and the team was highly successful in engaging with fans through scheduled and geo-targeted content output and news updates. PlayStation’s Twitter presence has grown steadily since its launch in 2007 and grew 125% within the span of 2013. With approximately 3.5 million followers, the feed became a valuable tool for gamers to learn the latest information as PS4’s launch drew closer. Twitter was used to communicate and spread information to the gaming community, The social media team at PlayStation took an active role in monitoring Twitter during the launch activities of the PS4, and took time to answer fan questions, retweet fan comments that brought value to other gamers, and curated Twitter questions for an official PS4 FAQ as well as crowdsourced game-focused interviews. The PS4 launch hashtags (#PS4, #GreatnessAwaits, #PS4Share, #PS4Live, #4ThePlayers, #PerfectDay) drew a total of 945,000 mentions by fans in November 2013 alone, trending in global and US regions. The PlayStation Twitter handle sent over 150 tweets, all carefully vetted and intended to provide value to gamers, during the PS4 launch in November 2013 and resulted in over 79,000 retweets from fans across the world.
