Stap isi

15 November 2008

Lessons learnt from Twitter

After an optimistic call for local government to get on the tweet, here’s some feedback from a month or so in the ‘verse.

Identity

Opinion is divided on corporate Twitter accounts. The alternative is one or more personal accounts repping for your organisation.

As people do move on to other jobs, it’s probably better to maintain an organisational account – as your central feed, at least. Government also has more stringent record keeping requirements and customer response protocols.

But what should it be called?

If you’re Twittering as “X Council”, you’ll find – unsurprisingly – that some people are not pleased to hear that “X Council is following you!”

You could twitter as the ‘web team’ – see @shcinternetteam, @sdcwebteam and SBCDevTeam – or set up the account from your library service and manage the channel in cooperation with your community information librarians (they are accomplished referrers).

Whatever you choose to do – and there are plenty of Councils using their official name in the UK – be upfront about who is behind your Twitter account. @DowningStreet and @UKParliament are good examples.

Extended profile

I would suggest setting up a page on your website – linked from your Twitter account – that answers the following questions upfront.

• Who is Twittering on behalf of the organisation?
• Why are you using Twitter? Is it just an RSS feed? What can you help me with?
• How quickly will you reply? I reckon it’s okay to say “during business hours” but you’ll also want to be clear about response times during business hours.
• What if I don’t want you to follow me? Outline Twitter’s block functionality. And provide a contact point for any further questions or issues.

Following

Exercise discretion. It may be best to only follow those who follow you.

Although it’s the internet and Twitter is public (you don’t need to be logged in to search Twitter or read Twitter profiles that are not protected), some people feel uncomfortable with organisations following them.

It’d be great if Twitter allowed you to customise the notification email text.

X Council is now following you on Twitter! Feel free to block us if you’d rather we didn’t. We’re using this channel to provide updates on our events and services.

But I’m not aware of any means to achieve this.

Other suggestions

• You can pipe your RSS feeds into Twitter – and that could be a legitimate use of the channel – but it may be more effective to write conversational, catchy copy to bundle with each link. (Even bridges can talk in the first person.)
• It’s surprisingly easy to miss tweets directed at you. Set up an automated system to alert you and your team. And then reply. (Neat example from @UKParliament.)
• Make like the scouts and be prepared. The Twitterati will test the newbie.

— b3rn   identity, twitter   Nov 15, 04:41 PM   #

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