Tips, tricks, advice, and answers for the 21st century global workspace.
Dear Baird’s CMC,
I’m a communications manager, and am soon going to take over the additional responsibility of managing my company’s Twitter account. Since I’ll be doing this for the first time, would you have any tips for effectiveness?
– Twitter Trepidation
Dear Twitter Trepidation,
Congratulations on your new role as company Twitter account manager! It’s a big responsibility, as you will be in charge of your company’s brand in Twitter-sphere, shaping its identity and reach. Our resident social media guru, Chris Nial, has some top tips for you:
“We”, “not “I”: The company account should not be an extension of your own online personality. Steer clear of the first person singular and stick to “we”. Let your tweets reflect the brand, not your personal views – people like interacting with their preferred companies online, so don’t remind your followers of the individual who’s actually controlling the brand’s voice.
Separate account for support: Twitter is increasingly becoming a forum where customers approach the company to resolve issues. While this is a great way to provide customer service, you don’t want to bombard *all* your followers with your responses to each query. Additionally, whoever visits your Twitter page may see a long list of tweets about product problems! It’s best to create a separate customer service account and direct customers to it if they require assistance. Use the main company account to share content, provide updates and retweet positive comments from customers.
Tweet at regular intervals: To maximise the number of people who read your Tweets, you need to update your account with fresh content throughout the day and the week. Since this is not your full-time job, achieving such regularity can prove to be a real challenge! It’s best to use an application (HootSuite, CoTweet, Gremln) to schedule your tweets to be published at regular intervals all day.
Apologise when required: Even if you spell-check all your content and re-read everything twice, chances are an occasional typo will slip through. It is *not* necessary to apologise for every tiny spelling or grammar error – you will only call attention to it again! If, however, you’ve provided a link that doesn’t work or made a factual error, apologise swiftly.