In the past few months, articles about Twitter have not been in short supply. Many focus on how you can use it for business, and why your company should embrace Twitter.
I’m no exception. I have been preaching the Twitter gospel as well. But today’s post will try to put some of that hype in perspective.
“If your firm can’t execute a proper Twitter strategy, it may be best to avoid the platform altogether.”
There. It’s out. I said it.
1. Don’t just think of it as a tool to talk at potential customers. Twitter is most useful for LISTENING.
2. Don’t have someone tweet for the company owner or key executive(s).
3. Don’t bother with Twitter if you can’t monitor it 24/7.
4. Don’t use Twitter if you need to vet copy through several layers of staff and your corporate attorney.
5. Don’t even think about paying people to follow your tweets or stacking your followers with bogus people planting bogus tweets.
If you don’t have the resources to use Twitter effectively, it will just end up being a time waster. Sure, there’s potentially a lot of valuable data about your company and brand out there in the Twittersphere. But think about whether setting up a Twitter account is the most efficient way to collect it, since it’s easy to periodically search the Twitter network at any time without actually joining it.
So when asked if your company is on Twitter --- and you aren’t --- just say, “…we have a monitoring program for our brands, but we’re not ready to implement it into our strategy yet.” You can thank me later.
“The very conversational nature that made Twitter so attractive in its nascent stages has been compromised, and the conversation has become a broadcast."