Twitter has taken the country by storm and everyone seems to want to have a Twitter account, or more appropriately, everyone wants you to know that they have a Twitter account. The reality is that most people don’t utilise social media (such as Twitter and Facebook) in a structured manner with clear aims and objectives.
Utilised appropriately these channels can help your brand engage with its audience and can be hugely beneficial in helping you achieve your objectives. Look at the great example of crowd sourcing by the team behind the Barack Obama presidential campaign which engaged and motivated millions of younger voters to get behind his ultimately successful bid for the White House using tools such as Twitter. He might have re-appropriated the idea from Hillary Clinton but his tends to be the example best remembered (as he won!). This use of Twitter to engage an audience and get them to share your message as an advocate is how to use the tool to it’s best advantage. However, you’ve obviously got to have a strategy for why and how you’re using the channel.
And you don’t have to use the channel directly. You might not think that anyone would be interested in hearing that someone has just brushed their teeth, but if that someone is a celebrity followed by thousands, who has justed brushed their teeth with your toothpaste brand, then you’d be surprised what the impact can be.
Twitter can be used effectively by most brands, once you know how to use it effectively.
For now, to protect your brand I’d always recommend that you secure your brand name with these channels as if you don’t then someone else will, and that’s not something you want. As long as you use it in some way (I often suggest just broadcasting blog updates into the account) then it’s not name sitting and you’re protecting your interests. When you’ve decided how to best utilise the channel to your benefit then you’re ready to go, and by just by being there it may help you guage interest in your presence as you may find that people start following you and telling you how to best engage.
What sort of experiences have you had with Twitter, both good and bad?
First posted on Marketing.co.uk in Feb 2010
