Now that Facebook is worth billions again, and Twitter is so hot that it's attracting scammers, it might be time to take them seriously as channels for corporate marketing messages.
When I was at the Big Corporation we took the easy route with Twitter: used it to rebroadcast our RSS feeds -- news releases, Web site updates, etc. It was easy to set up and worked like a charm.
But.
But I always felt that it was a little TOO easy. And I wondered if our followers were actually reading the tweets. But, hey, it didn't cost anything, so what's the harm?
Here's the perfect commentary on how to use Twitter in a corporate, or in this case, a municipal setting, without coming off as a mindless Twit. Blogger Stan Schroeder's short and funny case study on how the Boston Police Department uses Twitter as an online police scanner makes a great point: it's not only about getting the news out there, it's about humanizing your organization by listening to your audience.
Despite Twitter's primary function as a broadcast medium, don't forget that it's a two-way channel. The gold comes when you put something out there that compels a follower to Tweet back. And the real payoff is about how you handle that. If the straight-faced cops in Boston can loosen up online, maybe you can, too. You should.
No comments:
Post a Comment