By B.L. Ochman
(Back by popular demand) :>)
Mainstream media is in an orgiastic frenzy of coverage about Twitter. Everyone’s Tweeting, from celebrities to CEOs according to CNN, The View, Today, the NY Times, the Wall St Journal and just about everyone else. Each of them covers Twitter like it’s an overnight phenomenon that came out of nowhere, although Twitter has been gaining traction for three years and now has 9 14 million members.
Should your company be on Twitter? Not necessarily.
Top 10 reasons not to join Twitter:
- every Tweet has to be approved by legal. Twitter is a social network where conversation is fast and interconnected. If you have to wait a day, or even a few hours for your 140 character Tweet to gain legal approval, Twitter will be the wrong platform for you.
- you plan to use Twitter like a giant RSS feed, broadcasting nothing but headlines, deals. People follow people they find interesting. If all your Tweets are a one-way street: Block!
- you think using Twitter is a social media strategy. It’s a tactic, a tool, not a strategy. It works if you already have an online following who’ll view your Tweets as a way to interact with your company on a human level
- you think it’s a good idea to have someone tweet as if they are the president of the company. Authentic and transparent are the keys. It’s fine if someone besides the CEO tweets for your company, as long as they say that’s what they’re doing
- you are not going to respond when people direct tweets at you. Twitter is like the new watercooler. If you walked out to the water fountain and talked non-stop to people gathered there, they’d certainly be happy when you left. Ditto for Twitter.
- you think paying for followers might be a good idea. Followers are earned on Twitter. Be interesting, make only every 10th Tweet about you and you’ll gain and keep a following.
- you think all that matters on Twitter is getting a lot of people to follow you. Quality trumps quantity.
- you want to protect your updates. If people have to ask permission to see what you’re posting on Twitter, you’re defeating the purpose – which is conversation.
- you plan to track Twitter with Google Analytics. Google Analytics won’t give you true tracking. You need to track the urls you post with a service like budurl or bit.ly and use one or more social media tracking tools so you can get real-time stats on Twitter
- You think you can market to people with whom you have no relationship Listen first. Monitor what’s being said about your brand, your industry, your products. Then join the conversation and become part of the community. Then your occasional marketing messages will be accepted, or at least tolerated because you also add value to the community.
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I love this take on things, most come from the “you have to tweet” perspective and you’ve highlighted several, very legitimiate, reasons businesses should not be tweeting. Great stuff!
THANK YOU! I could not have stated this in any better terms. If you are not on Twitter to engage and interact then it is absolutely the wrong medium for you. Twitter is about building relationships and keeping in touch with your consumers and the constant change going on around us. It is about building communities and networks without borders and in real time.
Totally agree that these 10 reasons are an absolute need to know for any company that even considers creating their own Twitter account, but I still feel the title should be “Top 10 Things Your Company Should Not Do On Twitter” or something like that:) Now we don’t want to scare corporations away from Twitter, do we?
Great. I really agree with all of these on your list. Especially those numbers 3 and six. Paying people to follow you on twitter is the dumbest thing to do.
good post BL. we don’t pay people for posts but we will give them some pretty spectacular entertainments…