I get asked frequently for advice on how to Twitter as a business or an organization. There, right there, the approach is all wrong right from the beginning. Businesses and corporations don’t have random thoughts, or feelings, or friends. They don’t have faces. They don’t microblog. If you want to venture into the Twittersphere, you need to do it as a person representing a corporation. Do you see the subtle difference? OK, if you don’t… you can do like many other corporations are doing. Just follow my list of 5 Ways to Screw Up Your Corporate Twitter Account:
- Don’t follow anyone back. I mean anyone. Nope, not a soul. OK, maybe like 50 people, but no more. Just let people follow you. I mean, after all, you are [insert company name here] for crying out loud! Like you have time to follow people!
- Have a user name, avatar and bio that only reflects the company and doesn’t show the slightest inclination or hint that an actual human is involved anywhere in this account. People love conversing with a logo, yo!
- Let a bot tweet by simply automatically posting your RSS feed. Because, you know, people couldn’t just subscribe to that or anything. Or if you must tweet, just tweet at Twitter. Don’t reply @ other people on Twitter. Because that would almost be like a conversation. Eww!
- Only promote your company. Only post about your company. You’re there to promote the company, after all, right?
- Create the account and then disappear. People love to follow Twitter profiles that haven’t updated in weeks. So engaging.
If you don’t want to be a Twitter dweeb, just understand this. Social networking is not the same as advertising. This is a conversation. People don’t have conversations with companies, they have conversations with people at companies. Behave accordingly, and you will do just fine.
Just to solidify my point, I would like to offer up a couple of examples of corporations tweeting, both doing it well and doing it poorly.
Twitter businesses doing it poorly:
-
Twitter - I can’t resist, really. I love Twitter and all, but this is just lame. What are they doing wrong? Following 28, followed by 28,000 first of all. Also, their tweets are essentially updates. This is really just a glorified RSS feed with updated.
Jack and
Biz are only slightly better on Twitter’s behalf. Although I have to say, I actually got a reply from Twitter once. It was kind of startling, but someone is reading that account at least.
-
Etsy - It pains me to mention them, because I totally love Etsy. And I do like the conversational tone here, and the fact they follow some of their followers back. But this Twitter profile only tweets about Etsy, never replies @ another user, and has only 29 updates. Considering Etsy is all about the personal experience when you’re making a purchase, I sure wish I saw an Etsy official’s face and saw some personal tweets here, or even links to Etsy sellers’ personal blogs or something.
Twitter businesses doing it right:
-
Zappos - Following Zappos’ CEO is entertaining and engaging. He has posted silly pictures of himself, and has a very approachable manner. I would love to see him @ more, but he is following more than 12,000 people (even more than the 10,000-some following him). He’s making friends and increasing awareness of Zappos.
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JamesatBabyspot -I like a whole bunch of things about James’ account. For one thing, I know his name. I also still know his business because he worked that right into his user name. He tweets about this and that, and he tweets often. He does almost as many posts @ someone as he does not. I wish his face was his avatar. Otherwise, he’s doing it right. He’s networking, and he’s spreading the gospel about his product.
Do you guys have more examples of good and bad corporate tweeters? Share in the comments. And do you follow entities and corporations? For example, I follow
woot because, well, it’s woot. I’ll forgive them for only posting the latest woot. But they definitely are not part of the conversation.
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Zappos’ CEO actually sent me a direct message once! It was something like “Hey that is great!”. I swooned. As a business owner I struggle to keep all the plates in the air. Having him take time to answer a tweet, along with reading about his travels and good meals, makes me feel like someday life might be more manageable with lots of employees to delegate to. That way I can devote WAY more time to reading blogs and tweeting.
Thanks Kelby.
Very interesting… I just signed up for Twitter and will see how it goes.
I agree. I have another corporate twitter account that I use to help spread information about technology as we are an IT training and consulting company. I post our latest blog posts, upcoming events and have lately actually found the time to @ or dm people to give a personal approach to my company. We can be followed at Follow on Twitter
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this article. You hit it right on.
New to Twitterland, and doing a good job (so far), is TwittAd. They use Twitter as their main means of communication, thus do lots of @ messages. They’re following more than they’re being followed and seem to be highly responsive.
I’m torn about BackType since they do lots of @ messages and have quickly responded to my issues (replying via Twitter AND email), but follow hardly no one… Typical sign that this Twitter account is for “commercial purposes only.” Guess they use Summize or Google Alerts for hits on their name (Chris, don’t be mad at me — I LOVE your service!).
I could go through my Twitter contacts and name all those who aren’t up to snuff (in my opinionated opinion :)) but I won’t bore you — and I don’t want to make too many enemies. Besides, we get the point, right?
Other Twitter pet peeves of mine are:
(1) Serial tweeting — a way to get me to “unfollow” no matter WHO you are. First, it’s annoying, time consuming, and invasive. Second, how do you get any work done if you’re spending all this time tweeting hundreds of times a day?
(2) Carrying on a conversation that is better done by email, telephone or (at the VERY least) direct message.
(3) Swearing (pseudo-swearing counts), especially the f-word. This is clearly a personal issue and I’m not sure why it bothers me so much, ’cause I ain’t no saint. For me, it shows a lack of professionalism and respect.
(4) Trying to sound like you’re posting about an everyday occurrence and linking it back — or alluding — to your business, product, blog, event or website… Common’, do y’a really think we don’t see it for what it is?
(5) Replying to someone’s tweet or asking a question (like “when are you visiting?” and “what’s the plan?”) without the @… (this sorta falls under pet peeve #2).
(6) Overuse of text lingo and slang in one message. I shouldn’t have 2 use a decoder 2 understand what ur trying 2 say.
Sorry for the rant… just had to add my 2 cents. Thanks for writing this post and having the guts to call “guilty parties” out. It really needed to be said.
I wanted to personally thank you for including me on this! I am very honored by your comments!
These days companies need to be transparent! It’s all about the experience we can offer!
Thanks!
Jamesatbabyspot
I LOVE this website, it’s safe and easy to use. I share my baby, video, blogs with all my family and friends all over the world!!! It’s a great website! Check it OUT!
I loved when Samsung was getting ready to launch their new phone in Canada and had it on Twitter. It was clearly a real person doing the tweeting and they seemed involved in conversations, not sending out “ad” tweets. Plus they did follow!
Lauries last blog post..My Heart Stopped
Typepad is engaging the Twitter world in really neat way. They over-heard me “tweeting” Typepad help to someone, and they actually sent me a t-shirt that says “Typepad Loves Me” after I did a blog post about it. It was too funny.
People that try to sell me stuff on Twitter annoy me. I want to be their friend first. If I am interested in what they are selling, I will talk to them about it. I don’t twitter to buy/sell.
Michelle Wegners last blog post..Mind Your Manners
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