The goal for the Denny's brand Twitter account has always been simple: don't sound like a brand Twitter account. By straightforwardly using the platform as a user would (i.e., with natural language, awareness of current and relevant events and pop culture, a brisk and off-the-cuff style and response time, not pandering with outdated advertisements or promotions), we planned to separate ourselves from the deluge of corporate try-hardness flooding the landscape. In short? Be a part of the community, not an intrusion; to connect with our fans in an organic way.

People expect to see advertisements on television—but on their personal social media feeds it feels intrusive, so we decided to use Twitter just like our audience. We don’t worry too much about formality, we don’t overuse hashtags, and we eschew the idea that brand tweets have to use proper punctuation, grammar, or even spelling. We realize that sometimes just joking around with your audience yields a much better brand affinity than trying to get them to retweet a discount code. We asked ourselves, “What aspects of Twitter are truly…us?” Well, Twitter goes non-stop around the clock just like a 24 hour diner. Just like feeding late night conversations in our diner we also want to feed that irreverent social commentary that Twitter is known for. We react to real events that users care about with our own take, in real time. We have an opinion, we aren’t just piggybacking trends.

Sometimes the results of our campaign can be hard to quantify. Have we steadily increased followers? Yes – we’ve added 70K followers over the past year*, an increase of 23%. Have we consistently earned some of the highest engagement for brand tweets without paid promotion? Yes – we’ve seen over 170M impressions for our twitter content this past year* including 32M earned impressions on a SINGLE tweet. But the metric that matters most to us is nearly unmeasurable—and that's an online "street cred”, if you will. Users looks to Denny's for our opinions, for our take on the newest pop culture surprise, for our commentary on Apple live events, et al. Our strategy is successful because Twitter users eagerly include us in their community, and they see us separately from the other brands. Almost as if…we weren't a brand at all.