Ad Age’s Twitter Rules: Close, But No Cigar

April 08th 2009 Posted to Marketing, Twitter

Yesterday B.L. Ochman over at Advertising Age [UPDATE: Ochman is an independent blogger at What's Next and cross-posted to Ad Age. Sorry for the confusion] published a pretty good list of the Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn’t Tweet. The list has some obvious reasons – “1. You think using Twitter is a social-media strategy,” “8. You want to protect your updates” – as well as some useful reminders of things to avoid– “2. Every tweet has to be approved by legal,” “7. You think all that matters on Twitter is getting a lot of people to follow you.”

There were a few, however, that left me scratching my head. First, #3: You plan to use Twitter for nothing but broadcasting headlines or deals. This scenario is a popular one among companies as well as bloggers, and has good traction among users. Case in point: DellHomeOffers and Dell Outlet. Dell Home Offers Twitter 4-8-09The main draw in both cases are deals, plain and simple. While the venerable Dell Outlet does respond to questions directly and offers to help users, I’m going to go out on a very sturdy limb and hypothesize that of the 297,883 followers Dell Outlet has generated, maybe 200-300 follow for the non-deal content. The newer DellHomeOffers is deal content, plain and simple.

Last week Jeff Nolan wrote an interesting blog post titled Is Twitter Killing RSS? While killing is a bit over the top, I think the short answer is yes. Many companies in high tech products are finding that it is very easy and convenient to dump blog, wiki, discussion forum, and other content right into Twitter where more people will find and read it. Just keep an eye out for the telltale sign: from twitterfeed.

Next, #6: You think Tweeting as XYZ Corp. and using the company logo as your avatar might be a good idea. Organic conversations between real employees and customers is clearly laudable, and is typically the goal of a social media initiative. However, it’s clear there are some cases where customers want and need to connect with a “company.” Comcast Cares? While Frank Eliason, the main force behind the initiative, clearly identifies himself and does not claim to speak as “Comcast” it’s no mistake that his Twitter handle is not FrankEliason.

Colonel Tribune Twitter 4-8-09Further, look at Colonel Tribune, the mascot of the Chicago Tribune company. This fictional character does a nice job of aggregating content relevant to anyone living in or interested in Chicago and accretes value back to the newspaper, not an individual employee.

And what happens if you take a hands off approach to its logical conclusion? We end up with what has happened at Cisco and HP: practically every employee with internet access has set up a semi-official account, fragmenting the user base, and decreasing the overall corporate value. Its no shock that both companies are now working to rationalize the mess. Does it make sense to have one single account? No more than it makes sense to have one single company blog. But to let the gates swing wide open and declare you should not have an official corporate presence is reckless.

Finally, #9: You plan to track Twitter with Google Analytics. Ochman’s point here is not 100% clear, as it is difficult to tell if she is advising against tracking or against tracking with Google Analytics. But for the sake of discussion, lets assume the worst: That you should not bother tracking the impact of your Twitter initiative.

Well, no shocker here, this one is far from a best practice. Yes, the analytics are pretty poor today, and a simple analysis of followers alone is missing the point, however just letting it fly and hoping for the best is a quick path to frustration and, eventually, your CMO asking what all this effort has amounted to. Thankfully the usual suspects are working to provide a programmatic approach to Twitter analytics – WebTrends and Radian6 announced a new offering to do just that.

All in all, it was a very useful list and I recommend the read. Of course with a few caveats!

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  • Looks like a good healthy discussion between you and B.L. Oliver. I guess that's why social media is so great - being able to lay out a point and then have others interpret and refine with the ability to jump back in an clarify.

    I think you are both making good points when taken together paint a broader picture. I would add that sometimes it takes a mix of personality and logo'ed Twitter accounts to provide the community with a way to connect. At Radian6 the majority of us have a Twitter id but I would say about 4-6 of us are the heavy users, with 2 or 3 of us as the main voices. We also have the @radian6 account. It's a bit of a struggle as to what to do with it sometimes but we found we needed to have it because often people want to find us and it's not always evident as to which person to reach out to. People also like following brands as a sort of badge of brands they like or support. And finally often people would be @'ing our brand in discussions and before we owned the account those folks might have felt that we didn't have a presence. Generally @ambercadabra @huggard or I will still respond via our own Twitter accounts when we see someone sending a reply to @radian6. I think it's a mixed bag for a number of companies and as long as it's clear to users as to the purpose then I believe it works out in the end.

    And thanks for pointing out the Webtrends/Radian6 announcement. We are definitely quite excited to see the world of analytics for the web and the social web stepping closer together.

    Cheers. David
  • Hi David, thanks for the comments. Its really quite helpful to see this play out at Radian6. The mix of official and "unofficial" accounts seem to be the emerging best practice.

    I do want to key in on one thing you said: "often people would be @'ing our brand in discussions and before we owned the account those folks might have felt that we didn't have a presence." This expectation of participation and reaction on the part of the customer is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. It seems to me that community members are starting to develop pretty big expectations for customer service, beyond anything we have seen in the past.

    Just yesterday I exchanged a long series of tweets with @disqus trying to fix a commenting problem on this blog post -- apologies for all the test comments! About mid-way through when the Disqus team went quiet I got a bit frustrated until I realized that I don't pay them a thing, I have no SLA, and they owe me nothing at all. Their user service has been fantastic, but they are setting a pretty tough precedent for others, and even themselves, to live up to.

    I think a blog post will be coming . . .

    David, do you feel like you have to seek out and find customers to support, or can you just be reactive?
  • Hi B.L. thanks for the clarification on your relationship with Ad Age. The post has been updated.

    As for your comments, it appears that I have put you on the defensive. That was not my intent -- I was really looking to expand and enhance the discussion around your post -- but I do want to address a few specifics:

    "But it is not in the spirit of social media, and it is not going to build community." Here you are now conflating a tool with an objective and that's a big no-no. There are plenty of good examples of companies that are successfully using Twitter to publish only. Dismissing them as inappropriate is to assume something about their objectives -- sometimes firms just need to move some product.

    "Nothing to do with the point I made. Nothing whatsoever." I could not disagree more. You are advocating a personality-oriented approach to Twitter, and as companies move down that path they find that user confusion and mixed messages are MAJOR problems. I'm sure you are not advocating every employee set up his or her own official account, however some nuance here is desperately needed.

    "i never said don't monitor." As I wrote in the post, this was simply a rhetorical device to generate discussion. It was not intended as a commentary on your or your views.

    In all I think we are mostly in agreement, and I do recommend your post as a worthwhile read. However it lacks much of the nuance to make it truly actionable -- my goal was to add some of that nuance.
  • FYI - I blog at What's Next Blog, and cross-post to AdAge. I am not an AdAge reporter. But my blog is in the top tier of the AdAge Power 150.

    #3: You plan to use Twitter for nothing but broadcasting headlines or deals. - yes, you can do that, and yes, Dell and some other companies have done that successfully. But it is not in the spirit of social media, and it is not going to build community.

    6: You think Tweeting as XYZ Corp. and using the company logo as your avatar might be a good idea. - you said - "While Frank Eliason, the main force behind the initiative, clearly identifies himself and does not claim to speak as “Comcast” it’s no mistake that his Twitter handle is not FrankEliason. "

    and that's the point - comcast is the logo, but there is a human being with a name and a face attached to it. that's good for the brand. that's social networking.

    you said - "practically every employee with internet access has set up a semi-official account, fragmenting the user base, and decreasing the overall corporate value."

    Nothing to do with the point I made. Nothing whatsoever.

    #9: You plan to track Twitter with Google Analytics

    you said "But for the sake of discussion, lets assume the worst: That you should not bother tracking the impact of your Twitter initiative."

    you missed the point. i never said don't monitor. i said you need tools beyond Google Analytics, which doesn't track Twitter effectively. And I said there are plenty of them.

    Assuming the worst may make you a blog post, but it certainly distorted mine.
    sheesh!
    B.L. Ochman
    What's Next Blog
    http://whatsnextblog.com

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