Brandacadabra

Seven Questions Some Brands Are Asking About Twitter

A couple of days ago I came upon an article on brands using Twitter, from Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research. It was about most common questions that business owners/marketing managers ask on using this tool.

I’ve recently had clients fancy with the idea of using Twitter and Facebook as a brand marketing tool, and asking similar questions. However, none ever asked the most important thing—‘Why would I use Twitter?’. I can imagine that marketing people are currently overwhelmed with the things happening in digital marketing and branding, and that sometimes the hype is strong enough to make them consider a new tool, such as Twitter. Therefore, the need to give some pieces of advice, from a branding consultant’s point of view:

1. Strategy first. Tools after. You risk losing focus and doing irrelevant or ineffective things, instead of being fiercely careful with the resources. While twittering seems an easy thing to do, with global reach, zero costs and thousands of success stories, it also requires time and planning. So start seeing if your audience is on Twitter, how they are using it, whether you can speak to them on Twitter and engage in a conversation, and—most important—what’s your outcome for the invested time and resources. Think ROI.
2. Be relevant. Is it interesting and meaningful for those you are talking to? Why would anyone read what you write on Twitter, let alone engage in a conversation that will do you more good than harm? Use Twitter only if you can provide value (news, advice, cool things etc.) to your followers. Branding is about telling engaging stories. Spreading only crap corporate messages will make you annoying. Attracting hundreds of followers with sweepstakes, virals or games, to just spam then later with promotional messages won’t work either.
3. Be trustable. While it is obvious that people will trust more what other people say rather than trust companies, you still got a chance. Try to have a human profile rather than a corporate profile and be an ambassador for the brand you try to promote, than a cold corporate account people will trust less and distrust most of the times.
4. Share your brand. Building a brand with the help of social media assumes you are willing to share it, and lose control. Social branding means you have to be able to react and turn every interaction in an opportunity to build awareness, loyalty or brand associations, rather than worry about anything bad that might happen. Remember that I Got a Crush on Obama video? A political disaster for traditionalist political marketers, this proved to be a good thing eventually, by enhancing the perception of a popular, desirable person for the candidate.

These are just the most important details. They apply to building brands on Twitter, and require planning, commitment, imagination and losing control over your brand. That does not mean you cannot use Twitter for spam or for pushing your message or blatantly promoting a commercial offer. Just don’t expect attention or goodwill.

For those of you still interested, here are my answers to the seven questions:

1. Should we create multiple accounts for different divisions? How should we name them?  How should the content be different?

If you use the account just to spread official newsbits to whoever follows you, then use an account with your company’s name (eg. CompanyX). For multiple audiences, with different interests, use different accounts (eg. CompanyXInnovation, CompanyXSupport). Follow the ‘be relevant‘ rule and adjust the number and topics of your posts accordingly.

If you want to engage in conversation, use personal avatars for interacting with your followers (eg. JohnDoeCompanyX) and make clear from their profile that they represent your company. A personal approach is much more likely to generate goodwill rather than talking to an abstract corporate entity. If your company has a high personnel turnover, or if you don’t want to be too personal, then create a personified account (a virtual assistant).

2. Is it ok to just tweet out news on our main corporate account? Or should we be conversational?

It depends on what the outcome of the conversation is. Twitter is a good branding tool because it is a good PR tool. Conversation will rather generate goodwill, rather than allow you to explain yourself as a company. Think also about the amount of involvement you want to give your users in building (or breaking) your brand.

3. How do we get our corporate reps (sales, product teams) to use this tool, and be conversational?

It all starts with your corporate culture and your communication policies. Work on these first, see how these can be improved to get you close to your bigger goals. Conversation should be carried with the same openness and tone as on the phone, in real life, on e-mail or instant messengers. Twitter is just another channel/tool, but the main rules are the same.

4. Should we follow folks? If so, what’s the protocol? Should we only follow folks that follow us? We don’t want to appear like ‘big brother’.

There’s a total craze about getting followers, believing that they will, in turn, follow you. Why would they do that? To get thousands, if not tens of thousands of messages they will overlook? Do you want to be overlooked?

Success on Twitter is measured by the ratio followers/following, given by relevance. And success comes slow.

5. What are the tools to use to manage multiple authors/tweeters?

There are plenty. I recommend Twhirl and Splitweet. Hootsuite is also popular.

6. How can we find other examples of B2B twitter examples?

Jeremiah’s blog is a good source of best practice examples of social marketing, including Twitter. Kristin Foster of Ogilvy PR has also some good recommendations, as well as the analysts at Gartner.

7. How should we brand our Twitter backgrounds images?

Think of them as a 5-second elevator pitch. Make them interesting and meaningful by text also (as image), not only by graphics. Use the left column for the main message (that’s where everyone looks first, not at the tiny avatar/photo and small text bio at the top of the right column).

I’m sure a lot would disagree or feel the need to add a lot of ifs and buts. I couldn’t agree more—except that these are not generic advice for using Twitter, but rather guidelines for building a brand towards a specific goal, over a longer period of time and with measurable results. I’d love to hear about experiences you’ve had, issues you’ve encountered and brands that do very well on Twitter.