Missing the point
April 23, 2008 by Colleen Coplick
Filed under Social Media
I was basking in the sunshine yesterday, more or less participating in a client’s strategy meeting. (Good news is, they were basking in the sun too – it was a very lazy strategy meeting on our rooftop deck!) We were talking about the upcoming beta launch and how we were going to use Twitter with it.
Someone brought up TweetLater, a new service that allows you to future-schedule tweets.
I’ve got a problem with this. A big problem.
See, the thing about Twitter is, while it basically makes no sense until you’re in it and at first, it seems ridiculous, it is an amazingly powerful service to connect you to your community. And the reason it is so powerful is because of the interaction between people. To quote a current cliche – it’s about the conversation. If you’re future dating your tweets, then you’re not interacting. You’re broadcasting.
The argument we had on the roof focused on the fact that the company thought this would be a useful service for them to send updates out. I disagreed because I’m very bothered with the idea that people want to use Twitter as purely a megaphone service.
Tara Hunt of Horse Pig Cow Marketing has a fantastic post on ways companies can use Twitter effectively [Twitter 101]. She talks about the best company Twitter users striking a balance between promotional tweets (”Getting ready for our beta launch on May 1!”) and personal tweets (”At SFO, waiting for my flight to Vegas for CTIA”) with conversational tweets (”@colleencoplick that’s exactly what I’m talking about!”). It seems to me that TweetLater simply turns Twitter into a megaphone.
Do your company use Twitter? What’s your Twitter style?
(photo credit: Eye2Eye on Flickr)
Totally agree. Are we seeing the transition of Twitter to something monetised, not unlike MySpace and YouTube. But are we mourning the inevitable? As Twitter grows, should we not expect manipulation of its essential functions for profit?
I agree. I think that Twitter works best when the users truly embrace it for what it is – a conversation tool. Therefore, it is my opinion that it works best when a small company is represented on Twitter by at least several key members of the team – not just a lone company image. Of course, there are always exceptions but having multiple “faces” to the company utilizing the service, it can truly generate a “personal feel” that is inherently very, very attractive to most people. This personal touch will help ensure a much better chance at helping the community bond with your brand.