Opera GX on Twitter

Finding and engaging with your intended audience can be difficult, but the Opera GX social media team have got it right.

Opera GX is a gaming oriented browser using Chromium, used now by Microsoft Edge and, of course, Chrome. It packs many features that the others don't without installing various extensions, while giving users a fast, browsing experience. It also includes lots of gamer-oriented content, cool themes and even background music while browsing.

A lot of gamers use Twitter. Opera GX know this, and so they operate heavily on the social media platform.

One of the first things you will notice about their Twitter account is their ability to poke fun at the industry. This is something that gamers love to do, and so Opera GX gets in on the fun. And it works! Their engagement is consistently high.

Very recently, they posted what supposedly was the new map for Grand Theft Auto 6. Not only did this post gently mock Twitters new "Community Notes" feature to address misinformation, but also poked fun at the Grand Theft Auto 6 leak that occurred a few months ago.

It achieved a lot of engagement - many were quick to identify the map to actually be the map in Fortnite, but it also lead to many humorous comments. This then allowed Opera GX to engage with their followers by replying with equally humorous comments. In most situations, their followers engaged more with the replies from Opera GX (informally referred to as 'ratio-d') than the original comments.

This and many other posts that their social media team have posted have a similar theme with similar engagement. But how do they do it? How does it work so well?

• Original content - even when they retweet, they always retweet with their own comment accompanied by an image or an animated GIF. This gives their account personality, something that their followers can relate to, making their account worth following.
• Knowing their audience - Opera GX know their audience. They know what makes their followers like and are likely to share with their followers. This spreads their visibility and thus making their brand more recognisable.
• Understands their industry - through what they post, followers are able to know that the Opera GX knows what is going on in their industry. This keeps them relevant and their knowledge of the industry is up to date.
• Knows who they are - Opera GX are fully aware that they are not the leaders in the browsing market. By user base, they are nowhere the numbers of Chrome, Edge and Firefox users. You could classify them as niche. But this also means they are able to take a few risks with their posts, creating a fanbase which makes them dedicated to their product.

For these reasons, I find that the Opera GX Twitter account is an amazing example of social media done right. You may not understand their humour, and you may even gasp at how they get away with some of the content they post. But you may also not be their intended audience, and that is the key to any social media activity.

• Know where your audience is. Are they on LinkedIn? Facebook? Twitter?
• Know who your audience is. Are they middle-aged business professionals, or teenage / young twenties gamers?
• Know what content they are most likely to engage with - do they share statistics or helpful advice? Do they prefer to share humorous content?

So much goes into identifying a social media strategy. In the case of Opera GX, their marketing department is likely to have researched where their audience is and how they are likely to engage with their content, and devised a strategy around that, with the overall aim of getting users to adopt their browser. And from what I can see, it works - I'm using Opera GX right now as my default browser!