A reality check for Twitter: what’s next for businesses now that the hype’s wearing off? (part 2 of 3)

A reality check for businesses using Twitter

Twitter is primarily aimed at individuals, but Twitter’s popularity is driving many businesses to explore the microbogging tool.  It has been said that social media is hard to understand from the outside looking in. Nowhere is this more obvious than Twitter. But its also very important to listen first. Unfortunately, without going out to research and follow people, you won’t see any conversations.

Potential users are wondering how best to use Twitter and how to get started.  What’s the right business goal? Manage public relations? Be your own best news and update source? Drive the most hip and attentive customer service group? Provide only casual conversations with customers? Let the sales team connect with far flung internal team members?  Promote a blgo? Its hard to say.

But jumping in without deciding on the business goal, strategy and tactical approach before talking could alienate those very people you want to engage.  It takes time to be one of the 198 Zappos employees who are delivering happiness by using Twitter.

Social media users on LinkedIn have had a space controlled connections and relative ease of use and safety.  As they are now trying Twitter, many are faced with a free for all friend and follow system. This  scares some business users so much they delete their profile and leave the site.

Gartner published a report breaking down Twitter uses. Let’s look at the pros and cons of ways Twitter could be used for business:

Direct: Push messages out; one-way scenario

• Pros: Typically this is done by a Brand profile. This can work effectively if you have followers for your brand profile.  By only pushing messages out and intentionally avoiding having any conversations you limit the possible chances any employee can say or do anything wrong or controversal.  However, if you are only pushing a message out, you obviously only see Twitter as a free advertising mechanism.  Your followers won’t ride with you for very long.

• Cons: The general social media user audience may have a negative view of how you are using Twitter. especially if you don’t indicate that your profile is just a feed.  Worst case is that you will get noticed, but by bloggers who can be pretty harsh. You may find yourself as an example on a blog – not the best publicity. And really, we are human so count on someone doing  or saying something wrong.  Prepare, determine an escalation plan, determine a spokesperson and create some policy to help your staff.

The BoduBlog:

The social networking revolution isn’t just about you putting out messages about your brand – it’s about constantly listening to what’s being said about your brand, and twitter makes that delightfully simple – To use twitter or any other social networking tool effectively, you have to think in wider terms than simply sending out ‘we’re great’ tweets daily. 

• Recommendation: Be sure to indicate the feed is not interactive. If this is a pure coporate profile, then you may have a team managing the posts. It will be important that they are trained together and have consistent presentation and message.

Example: Business News @e24business is only a news feed but no note, McAfee News Feed includes the non interactive statement

Indirect: Letting employees tweet, converse and grow their personal brand, enhancing company brand as well.

• Pros: If you have selected the right employees to get started with this, and they are on social media with the right policy understandings and guidelines, this can work very well for the company. If they are committed to Twitter then their popularity can reflect well on the brand.

• Cons: This can also reflect negatively on the company brand should policy, guidelines or decorum not be followed.

• Recommendations: Add statement of “opinions expressed are my own”on the account, but it still we refelct on the brand.  This could be a employee with a branded account, or an employee with a personal account.  Follow a 80/20 rule either way.  If the former then 80% of your tweets corporate news, information of value, and  20% conversation and personal.  20% if the other 80% is done, can be justified for business.  Of that 5% direct promotion of product, services, or event (unless the event is educational in nature). If you are the later – employee with a personal account, they 20% business related and 80% personal.

Example: Zappos – @zappos_sole_man

Internal: Having conversations internal to the organization across departments or offices

• Pros: The platform is free. You can make your tweets private and only allow in your friends or fellow workers.

• Cons:Its not really that secure.

• Recommendations I would not recommend using Twitter in this way. There are better and more secure sites or software available to do this such as the Yammer or Salesforce.com Chatter application.

Example: Can’t find any – its internal and private

Inbound: Using Twitter as listening and trend tracking tool

• Pros: You can capture real time information and trending on topics. Competitive intelligence and business research professionals love Twitter for the insight it can bring.
• Cons: You will need to spend some time interpeting and following links to gather the intelligence that is linked to the 140 character posts.
• Recommendations: If you are looking for free applications and tools, use Twitter in conjunction with Google Alerts and more specific /niche search tools to dig up the info you are trying to find. Most of the social media tools require you to have a profile on the account inorder to fully search the site. Even so, privacy settings for individuals will be in effect.

Example: sites like Trendmap.com and Twendz can help get you started on Twitter info searchs

Twitter isn’t the end-all-be-all it has been hyped up to be, but in my the next blog I’ll discuss key demographics and potential Twitter applications that make sense for nearly all businesses to explore. 

How are you using Twitter today?

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