Do You Have a Tweet Tooth?

While Twitter is heavily integrated into the social media strategies of some organizations it is uncharted territory for others.  A cross between a real-time chat room, Facebook status updates, and a miniature blog, Twitter can be an effective tool to get PR points across and even handle customer service issues.

What is Twitter?

Many people have heard the terms "Twitter" and "tweet" because they have become everyday terminology.  Some people have not yet viewed or participated in this form of social media.  Twitter is a micro-blogging tool (Postman 52) that allows users to post information 140 characters at a time.  These posts are called "tweets".

The people who subscribe to read an individual or organization's tweets are called "followers".  The goal is to have a network of followers who in turn might "re-tweet" your tweets to his or her network of followers.  This distributes the message.

Twitter's Uses - The Good and The Bad

Individuals often use Twitter to their friends know what's going on in their lives.  As with any social networking tool, there has to be some level of restraint, because the majority of people probably don't want or need to know minute details like how often you brush your teeth or what you eat for every meal - unless, of course, that's what you tweet about for a specific audience!

A good use of a corporate Twitter account is as a brand ambassador as Joel Postman explains in his book SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate (55).  Tweets can be sent out to alert followers to press releases, marketing campaigns, new blog entries, website updates, and more. (More could include real-time customer service if your organization has the resources to actively track what others are saying about your company.)

It's important to know that anyone can register any Twitter user name.  Therefore, an organization should grab its own name before someone else does, even it if doesn't intend to tweet right away.

Is Twitter an Effective PR Tool?

I personally follow a few companies on Twitter; however, they don't always have too much to say about company strategy.  (I'll be honest - I mostly tweet about my other blog, and look for future animal science topics to write about.  Checking in with my favorite celebrities is a good time-waster too!)

There are some tools that can be used to measure the reach of Twitter because just because an organization has a large number of followers it doesn't mean the message is being heard.  (And - you have to post regular tweets in the first place to get the message out there!)

• Twinfluence measures reach, velocity, and social capital.
• Twittorati, like blog tracker Technorati, tracks the tweets from bloggers with the highest "authority".
• TwitterSheep* compares keywords to help compare you and your competition.

* It also has some pretty cute sheep cartoons.

My biggest takeaway from this part of the course reading is that anyone can Tweet about anything (for better or for worse) but it's important to track and react.

 
Resources:

Gift Leader. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2010. http://www.gift-leader.com/pro/big/ruler/rr1013005.jpg (ruler graphic)

Lee, Chris. "Kevin Smith's Southwest Airlines incident sets Web all a-Twitter." Los Angeles Times 16 Feb. 2010. Web. 20 May 2010. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/16/entertainment/la-et-kevin-smith16-2010feb16

Postman, Joel. SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2009. 31-75. Print.


Twitter. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2010. http://www.twitter.com/ (logo)