An area that’s interesting me at the moment is the use of Twitter by businesses. There are a number of companies that seem to have made a success of using Twitter such as Dell, Starbucks and Lastminute.com and it’s sure to be one of the hottest things to do of 2009.
But what are the rules and etiquette of using it? How do you increase the number of followers that you have? How do you justify the time input?
These are all the things I get asked, and worry about myself.
I checked out LinkedIn’s excellent Question feature and saw that, not surprisingly, someone else had the same question – and it’s stimulated quite a response.
Seven highlight points, which make the most sense to me, include:
- “Everything you tweet is searchable on the web. Every tweet creates a new page. This can be good and bad. Good if you’re strategically using key words for which you want to be found; and bad if you aren’t mindful that if you’re not nice, it can come back to bite you!” Denise Wakeman
- “Keep 80% of your tweets business and 20% personal, and talk about others not you. Careful about too much touting and pimping you business.” Rod Sloane
- “Always check your @Replies and Direct Messages when you re-enter Twitter. And try to acknowledge them in a reasonable timeframe. (Using TweetDeck can certainly help here – I keep a “pane” of my @Replies open.) Otherwise you’re missing opportunities to connect and further the conversation.” Janet Johnson
- “I only have one more to add: do not regard Twitter as the solution. Twitter is merely a tool that you can use to provide part of an overall solution. For example, using Twitter to receive customer service requests may not be beneficial if your in-house customer service tracking system has its own problems.” John Bredehoft
- “Nobody at Twitter flames, or rants and raves about other followers. We’re all beyond that there. Twitter is a community of more astute and generally more “plugged in” users that recognize and value the need to share information and links to make this a better world (seriously).” Greg Lee
- “Confidential information, and the disclosure of confidential information, might be inadvertent, much like talking too loud in a crowded restaurant. Twitter conversation might share a fact of customer representation, opinion of a customer’s strategy, internal strategic discussion or workplace tension with colleagues and other employees.” Kim Kobza
- “Just like athletes and other celebrities get busted doing stuff because everyone has a cell phone with camera/video capabilities, you best be careful about what you post. EVERYTHING we do and say is in the public domain.” Steve Gardner
So there you have it. It’s worth checking out the whole Q&A, where these contributors, and others, flesh out their views.
In addition to the points above, I would say, from a public relations point of view, that the best business Twitter users are those that properly engage – that means following as well as being followed. It’s not one way traffic.
Also, it’s good when businesses use Twitter in some sort of imaginative way – i.e. not just sending press release links – but either using it for customer services or providing advice adds value rather than just becomes spam.
Getting new users is a tricky one. Apart from dedicating some time and energy to it, it’s worth promoting via other business channels, such as the company website, social networks and customer forums. Be patient, it won’t happen overnight.
Perhaps most importantly, accept that (at least at the moment) Twitter is just another channel. It might be getting a lot of media attention, but it’s still a minority interest in the grand scheme of things (there are lots of technology PR people like me on it). Ask yourself the question: “are my customers likely to be using Twitter” before diving in?
Finally, as one respondent to the LinkedIn thread advised, schedule time to it, otherwise it can take over your life a bit.
