To effectively manage your brand's Twitter account is a slightly different process to managing your personal one. The functionality may look the same, but your content is going to be different. Here are some tips to help make your brands profile a success:
Never associate your brand with emotive and personal tweets. When tweeting from your personal account, you can pretty much say anything you like.
Brands, however, should only tweet factual information and never opinionated statements. Refrain from making insensitive comments from your brand's account. Remember your brand is always neutral!
Follow your competitors, especially if you're in an industry where collaboration is essential. Don't be afraid to retweet other brands' tweets. This helps builds a healthy connection and could lead to a possible partnership.
Do not constantly promote your product or services; tell people about other industry-related things as well. Eg, if you are managing a Twitter profile for a clothing retailer, instead of tweeting about your specials, try tweeting about fashion tips or what the latest spring catalogue will compromise.
Including industry related tweets is value-added information and will always be appreciated. Remember, your followers chose to follow you. They probably know that your clothing is of amazing quality; there is no need to remind them of this every day.
Engage with your followers! If someone sends you a message, reply to them and encourage a healthy dialogue rather than a monologue. Respond to @ messages promptly.
Examples of brands that are getting customer service right in South Africa are Exclus1ves (@exclusivescoza - disclaimer: although Exclus1ves is a Realm Digital client, its customer service department has no link to Realm Digital at all), FNB (@rbjacobs - many have said that their primary reason for switching to FNB is because of RB Jacobs) and Woolworths (@woolworths_sa).
Most people say that brands should always use a personal gravatar (globally recognised avatar) for their Twitter account and not their company logo. Although I somewhat agree with this, many brands do not want to be represented by a single person for they are more team-orientated. A simple way to combat this is by introducing a mascot (eg Digital) or getting creative with your logo. Don't be afraid to try new things!
Apart from the logo, you should also be careful when using automated direct messages when someone follows you. Some people see this as spam and may not feel like it's personal enough. This may result in an unfollow.
Everything you do online can be measured. Make sure you are using a social client such as Hootsuite to monitor and measure what tweets are popular and which ones are not. This will help you gain insight into what your followers enjoy and what they don't.
If you are using a social client to manage your personal and brand accounts, always check which account you are tweeting from.
Do not spam people! Ever! Don't ever use trending hashtags to spam people.
The HabitatUK case study is a perfect example to use when explaining this. This trendy furniture store started using trending hash tags in its (totally unrelated to the hashtag) tweets to promote its company. This is a major no-no!
There are many other aspects to managing your Twitter profile. However, if you are a small-to-medium business which has only recently begun embracing social media, consider these points as your core focus.
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Disclaimer added at 12.15pm on 26 July 2011.
Disclaimer updated at 12.30pm on 26 July 2011.
