Comments on: How Should Companies Approach Twitter?

By: Suzie

Suzie — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:33:29 +0000

I believe Twitter is just a short fad and will quickly be a blip on the radar screen of the internet. It's so 90's, only being able to type less that 200 characters??

By: Денис DEN

Денис DEN — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:09:18 +0000

On the other hand, would it be the same if the CEO of a large, faceless company had a Twitter page?

By: Twitter Dating

Twitter Dating — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:58:11 +0000

Twitter is also a great tool for increasing traffic to youtube videos

By: abe arty

abe arty — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:43:06 +0000

I use twitter but more for personal reasons so much for business .. maybe I will try to use it for that reason in the future.

By: Britney

Britney — Sun, 24 May 2009 19:42:41 +0000

I use twitter for business and personal and the question I always keep coming back to is quality or quantity..is it better to have 100 followers matter or 10,000 followers who communicate sporadically…it's a quandry

By: no exercise

no exercise — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:32:01 +0000

i use the bookmarking way to be able to promote my site.

By: Hazel Q.

Hazel Q. — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:01:24 +0000

I agree with you Brian, I also use my blog's name on Twitter. And as Ryan said in this post, I try to write updates about the blog, not really on a personal level, but I might consider a mixture of both in my future tweets.

By: jaymowa

jaymowa — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:06:26 +0000

I always feel that Twitter is at its best as a personal communication medium. If I see posts there from a company it just says to me OK they are doing this to promote business and for no other reason and I tend to avoid this type of Tweet.I much prefer that the company representative be he the CEO or someone else should use a personal Twitter account to give news of the company.Articles

By: jaymowa

jaymowa — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:06:00 +0000

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Mon, 18 May 2009 06:39:15 +0000

They be professional and continue to build there brand by providing quality information that helps the people on twitter. " rel="nofollow">http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1554164">:)

By: Olga64

Olga64 — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:49:18 +0000

I use http://flutweets.com to track the swine flu. Easy and convenient

By: Olga64

Olga64 — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:49:00 +0000

I use http://flutweets.com to track the swine flu. Easy and convenient

By: bastille77

bastille77 — Sat, 16 May 2009 16:44:33 +0000

I use both my personal name (for branding) and the title of my niche to keep things targeted for the right audience.

By: bebopdesigner

bebopdesigner — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:29:27 +0000

It's a bit hard to decide what's right, specially if you're an NGO. But if there's a journalist or someone from communications dpt. who can give an hand, things can run a lot smoother. Of course there's always the "use it as feed approach", but it's not good enough, there is so much more than can be done. Check @ots_oet

Cheers

By: jhon

jhon — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:22:56 +0000

Agree to that, it really ruins it's point! http://www.salefor.us http://www.tvforpc.us

By: jhon

jhon — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:22:00 +0000

Agree to that, it really ruins it's point! http://www.salefor.us http://www.tvforpc.us

By: rnnbrwn

rnnbrwn — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:17:41 +0000

Another aspect of "how companies use Twitter" is to think of the Public Sector, and Local Authority organisations throughout the UK.

I currently work as a Web Development manager of a local authority and – because "communication" is dealt with by a separate section of the organisation, even acquiring the right to promote the potential use of Twitter is difficult.

In my experience, those with the expertise and knowledge find it difficult to have their voices heard in local authorities.

By: Adidasi

Adidasi — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:02:21 +0000

Agree to that, it really ruins it's point!

By: tvanslooten

tvanslooten — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:58:13 +0000

I preferred to follow both aspects. Since people not just rely on what and how your company is doing but they probably check and evaluate the company's founder to assure quality insurance and to know that it is legal. arborist Minneapolis

By: tvanslooten

tvanslooten — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:52:00 +0000

By: tvanslooten

tvanslooten — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:48:55 +0000

By: tvanslooten

tvanslooten — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:48:00 +0000

By: JoelDrapper

JoelDrapper — Tue, 12 May 2009 01:31:09 +0000

I totally agree too. You'll notice I only follow 90 people on my personal account, @JoelDrapper. I don't have much control over how the @9miles account is used.

By: Owen Greaves

Owen Greaves — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:22:10 +0000

In GENERAL:

I think the line between Business & Social Media is blured when it comes to businesses claiming relationships are important to them, but really, it's more about the transaction and how many they can turn in a quarter.

I also feel that we as a society have failed at humane aspect working in large businesses, if relationships were truly important then why the gap between developing loyalty and results?

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:15:11 +0000

To use Lee's Broadcast <———> Engage spectrum (well put!) following thousands and hoping for an auto-follow back seems like an excellent way to increase your broadcast base in raw numbers, but the opposite of what one needs to do to truly engage with those followers in any meaningful way.

Regardless of the actual scale of the numbers, I've always been drawn to people/companies whose followers outweigh their followed by at least a factor of 2… that, to me, says "value offerer" instead of "follow collector".

By: Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:52:37 +0000

Agreed – not sure how effective auto-following is. Really ruins the whole point of Twitter, in my opinion.

By: mannmade

mannmade — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:40:41 +0000

I agree!

By: Adrian (CTO, vzaar)

Adrian (CTO, vzaar) — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:53:14 +0000

Joel,

You're also following 24000 people (give or take). I would wonder how you can effectively follow a traffic stream that large?

Adrian

By: JoelDrapper

JoelDrapper — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:50:17 +0000

At 9miles Media, we all have both our own personal twitter accounts, and an @9miles account which now has 24,718 followers.

All of our twitter accounts combined have 70,114 followers.

By: Brian Artka

Brian Artka — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:15:17 +0000

@Lee
Very good points on what companies think of doing versus actually doing.

Before any company thinks about twitter, they need to research their industry and see why they should be using it. A goal, even if its a simple sentence, would be a nice first step towards using any of the social networking tools(we all know it, but some dont… these are just tools). Instead of traditional media saying its cool, so you have to use it; have a goal in mind to why you want to use it.

I'd like to add that personally, I would not follow a straight company name unless it has proven to be someone who has personality running the account. If its going to be a company name, that company needs to explain who is being represented on that account to make it more personal, which, theoretically, would make the person more engaging.

Either way a company chooses to represent itself, the old saying "Garbage in = Garbage Out" still holds true here. How much time one spends crafting his/her/ or company tweets is directly related to what the outcome will be.