Duncan Bannatyne, multimillionaire health club entrepreneur and one of the stars of Dragon’s Den, has had a rocky relationship with Twitter over the last few years. From a slagging match about charity contributions with a rather shocked Glaswegian housewife back in 2009, to accusations of hypocrisy whilst holidaying in France when he was supposedly promoting UK seaside resorts, to dismissing the idea of following more than 80 of his tens of thousands of followers as “brown nosing”, his presence on the social media site has been fairly controversial. Though apparently “a big fan” of Twitter, it seems it didn’t love him quite so much.
Until recently, when he went back on his previous statements to declare the arrival of #duncansdream, a philanthropic desire for each of his 100,000+ followers to follow each other, thereby sharing his Twitter power amongst his people. The trend was popular for a while, and followers seemed to enjoy the experience, gaining sometimes hundreds of new followers and making contact with people all over the world who shared a common interest in the dragon and his work. The hashtag was supposedly put to bed by Bannatyne on 10th June:
“Just for a laugh lets[sic] see if we can get #duncansdream trending one more time before midnight then bury it”
Its reincarnation is #bannatynesays, a hashtag to beg, ahem, request that the dragon RT their message, mentions them on FF and adds them to his following list – a list still only 146 long, mind you (that’s not even 0.2% of his total followers). He’s adding 10 of the best every day for a week, this week only and has quickly raised the tag to a popular trending topic:
“Gosh what have I started? over 300 replies I need a break so going for a coffee but lets get #bannatynesays trending please”
Entrepreneur through and through, clearly. But is this the way to go for other companies? It would certainly be a great plan next to request that each of his followers donates even £1 to one of his supported charities, that’s £100,000 in the bank for the price of a tweet. But unless you have the celebrity weight behind you, mass following groups are generally frowned upon as a spammy kind of marketing. To use Twitter as a forum for promotions and getting your fans and customers to interact and become part of your brand is certainly a valuable technique.
