Twitter Is Far More Fun If You’re Human

Twitter Is Far More Fun If You’re Human

Its always nice if someone tweets as a person instead of as a corporate identity. There are times where this may not be the most workable way forwards of course. If you have established a Twitter feed which just duplicates your RSS feed and passes on links to stories on your blog / corporate site then there is justification for just making the biography of your Twitter profile as descriptive as possible about exactly what you are going to get. Examples of such accounts would be the Guardian’s stage news twitter feed @GuardianStage which simply duplicates the RSS feed you could otherwise subscribe to. Here there is no engagement with the subscribed audience, just a feed of useful news.

On the other hand if you are the person responsible for updating the corporate Twitter feed there is no reason you can’t tell us in the biography who you actually are! There might well be more than one person responsible for it but there are tools out there for you to use and many do so effectively. Remember the way to use social media most effectively is to engage your audience in conversation. I’m sure you’ll agree its far easier to have a conversation when you know who you are talking to. This might be as simple as sticking something like “Tweets from Marketing Assistant, Bob” in the biography field. Of course, if you are the standbys for Elphaba and Glinda in the West End production of Wicked you could always sign off your tweets with your initials so that your audience know who it is they are talking to. I think this is a really nice touch. There is reference made to the fact that the actresses have a laptop in their dressing room in this interview. If the marketing department of one of the West End’s biggest shows is willing to empower their employees to tweet on their behalf, showing their human side, couldn’t your organisation?

Photo credit: Steve Keys on Flickr

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