the Why of twitter

Right, I’ve set the scene here, lets get into the W’s:

(Since I read this blog post by Simon Telfer, I’ve adjusted my “w’s” to always put Why? at the top of the list)

You may have heard about Twitter, you may even have a personal Twitter account, but Why are you interested in Twitter for your organisation? Do you want to connect with your “customers” or stakeholders or community? Use it as a new channel for your comm’s and news messages?  Communicate? Listen?  All of those things are possible.

Listening is definitely the first step (and probably the most common “Why” factor for organisations).  As with any publishing media, you need to understand it before you use it.  Twitter is public. Indelible. Instant.  There is a LOT of noise out there. To find out what Twitter users are saying about you, your organisation, your products/services, you’ll need to start “Listenting”.  Start “following” people and organisations you want to “listen” to.  Your homepage will soon start filling up with all sorts of information.  You can search (just like you do in your favourite search engine) on key words, names etc.   As you “listen” you’ll see what kinds of tweets are interesting and useful.

140 characters is not a lot of space to convey information.  One of the most popular Twitter tactics for organisations is to post links to their own articles and websites, and other useful content on the web.  As a “Listener” to Twitter, you’ll be able to get loads of useful / interesting / ridiculous / relevant / irrelevant bits of news & information from anywhere and everywhere… it all comes down to who you’re listing to!  Here’s one from my twitterfeed this morning:

As you “listen” to what others are posting, you’ll get the feel for what’s interesting & useful.  That post above is an example of an organisation “Broadcasting”:

Broadcasting information is one thing that Twitter can help with, very easily.  It’s a way to publish short sound-bites on the internet.  But that is only the beginning.  Using Twitter as a broadcast channel for your press-releases or news-feeds is only the tip of the iceberg.  Before you hit the “Tweet” button, remember that “Tweet” really stands for “Print” and “Publish” and “Public”.  Check and double-check before you “Tweet”, especially if you’re Tweeting on behalf of your employer.  You’ll need to ensure your message is in line with your organisation’s communications policy, what you stand for.  Once you “Tweet”, your message is live and uneditable.  (Although there’s an emergency “eek, delete!” button, it’s probably going to be too late to retract if you’ve said something you didn’t mean to say).

Remember what’s useful and appropriate to broadcast.  Some organisations will have a dedicated “news-feed” twitter account, which is great for your stakeholders who can choose to follow your updates & newsfeeds.

Engaging is the next step.  Replying to other people’s Tweets is the first way to step into a conversation. Just like real conversations, only they’re public!  You can address public Tweets to individuals or multiple Twitter accounts by including their “@username”  in your Tweets.  Monitor your “@Mentions”, and you can choose to engage reactively on Twitter.  Don’t forget, you can be proactive, and start conversations, too!  Here’s an example of an organisation listening, and choosing to Engage via a “Reply”:

You can “engage” by seeing something you think is useful and “forwarding” or “re-tweeting” (“RT”) to your followers.  Be careful that this isn’t percieved as spam – if you’re constantly re-tweeting other people’s stuff, then where is the value that YOU are adding?

Twitter can be used for private conversations, too.  Users need to be following each other, and private “Messages” work like emails between users.  Don’t confuse the Tweets and the Message functionality, or your private messages will be broadcast to the world.

Building relationships: cheesy as it sounds, the potential for using Twitter to build relationships with your customers/community/stakeholders should not be underestimated!  This is the masterclass level, and you’ll need to Listen, Broadcast, and Engage with appropriate, timely, informative, entertaining and relevant Tweets.  It will take time and energy to get this working for you.  Some interesting stats (globally, not NZ-specific) show that social media connections engender a high level of trust and engagement can quickly turn into a transaction.  If your organisation is not “for profit”, the same advice that you’ll hear for commercial relationships can be translated into whatever “relationships” you want to build.

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