If you are curious as to the thinking behind the Arena Flowers Twitter feed then read on. Alternatively, you can have a look at our fantastic range of flowers and enjoy 15% off on your first three orders with Promo Code ArenaTweets (you can also get 25% off your first three orders on AmazeBox.co.uk with promo code TwitterAmaze).

The Idea

Inspired by the true original alternative corporate Twitter account - @betfairpoker, we made the change to our current style of tweeting in September 2011.  Originally (and for two years) we had employed the commonplace business style account recommended as standard by social media people. However it was not really working. Will Wynne, of Arena, explains: "The basis of the change of tack was simple: engagement on the previous form of our tweeting was virtually nil."

"No retweets, no favourites, no interaction, just our random tweets disappearing into the void. Occasionally a family member or a friend might retweet something, and occasionally another florist might comment on something. All pretty tragic and pointless."

"Unsurprisingly, people are not that interested in tweets about flowers...I don't blame them....it's just not that interesting, not much changes so there's no new news to tweet so people don't engage. We were basically being followed by bots and the odd person. This was not a value added activity for us, an organisation with limited resources. I would go so far as to say the value of our twitter account in its previous form was absolutely nil. Options: either change the approach, carry on wasting time writing stuff that no-one reads or stop tweeting?"

Getting Started

The initial reaction to the account was a mixture of positive and negative. The positivity came from the new followers who seemed to enjoy the account and we were pleased and a little surprised when the tweet below was retweeted over 100 times.

The negativity came from an unexpected source - friends of Arena Flowers. Many were bewildered by the new style with some believing we had lost our senses. Others could not see the humour. Other flower-related businesses looked over protectively and offered us kindly words of advice about how to conduct ourselves on Twitter properly. Spurred on the positive feedback and undeterred by the doubters we carried on in the new direction. In the meantime we had a purge of who we followed by routing out the social media gurus, life coaches and bots of any type. Professional competition people were unfollowed as well as feeds and obviously the hundreds of abandoned accounts. Most of this was done manually through reading our feed though the abandoned accounted were identified through manageflitter (a very useful tool btw).

The Writers

The account is written by three people with varying amounts of input though the bulk of the content is produced by lead writer Ed Ross who explains how he has found working on the account.

He said: "It was a unique opportunity to contribute to a corporate Twitter account without having to push promos and self-serving content.  I'd already developed my own tweeting style before writing for the account, so it was nice to be able to build on that. We are given pretty much a free rein in terms of material and it has been a fun project to work on.

"I was a little perturbed by the early criticism as I was unsure of their agenda. I was almost relieved that the dissenters were friends of Arena Flowers as they were not particularly the people we wanted to reach. New followers have come to the account because they enjoy stories and humour - they want to be entertained; so the response we now get is overwhelmingly positive." 

The writers are also regular contributors to the Arena Flowers Blog with comic illustrations, short stories and competition designs. One of the most popular pages on the entire website over the Valentine period was  Anthony Morcom's piece entitled How To Tell If A Girl Likes You.

Positive Feedback

As much as we would like to we don't retweet praise on the account because it is boring. But maybe it is OK on our own webpage! Here is a small selection of some of our favourites and many thanks to the people who took the time to recommend us to their followers.

Follow @ArenaFlowers