I know that Twitter is an opt-in service, but brands on Twitter need to put more effort in showing their human side which is an important element of social media.
Yes Twitter is an incredibly useful and important tool for brands to build relationships, but there is still an ‘old’ media approach to brands use of Twitter.
Who are you – are you human?
Straight up - what significance is just a link to a brand’s homepage to me as a follower on Twitter? If I’m following a brand on Twitter then I should already know the main online touch points, the most obvious being the corporate website.
If a brand decides to follow me and I need to make a decision to follow back, then I would prefer to see a link to the brand’s ‘tweeple’ page with pictures of those contributing to Twitter on behalf of the brand, with additional links to their own social network profiles
Where’s the transparency?
Most brand websites follow a similar structure for example: home, about, contact, who we are etc… so if you are using Twitter why not add a tweeple page with photos, biog and links to the individual contributor’s own social networks so there is a level of transparency.
Taking this further, if it is too much effort to set up a new web page, or it causes your web team too much stress, then it takes 10 minutes to mock up a background with text and photos to be applied to your Twitter brand profile.
Social media is all about open, honest communication
So if you are a brand using Twitter as a tool, to engage and build relationships with your customers, then show your face please.
If you liked this blog post, copy, paste then tweet it:
RT @TomChapman Brands on Twitter show your face: http://bit.ly/gq9k
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Richard Hiscutt 01.08.09 at 8:34 pm
Tom, think you’ve made some good points here. No one likes a faceless robot in their space, especially if that robot is only pushing promotional messages!
However, there are some circumstances where the robot is OK, and even sought after. Twitter feeds of delays on train lines or airlines are a good example, and wouldn’t necessarily work as well as human commentators due to the nature of the information they’re providing.
Of course the best robot had to be MarsPhoenix - but maybe that’s because the human side was evident!
Ultimately don’t forget social networks ARE opt-in, no one forces you to follow. So if those brands don’t learn the lesson soon they’ll soon get the idea when they have no one interacting with them!
Rich (@richardhiscutt)
Tom Chapman 01.08.09 at 9:00 pm
Hey Rich thanks for getting involved!
A while back I blogged about Gradwell’s use of Twitter for their network service updates which is an example of your Twitter subject matter.
But I also know that someone is administrating those tweets and is responsible for the service, so this is similar to having a customer service representative. All these companies have someone responsible for their Twitter presence so it would be great to have a face related to the stream.
Michael Litman 01.08.09 at 10:34 pm
Tom, thanks for the heads up on the blog post. You know I think we’re on similar wavelengths with all this social media stuff and bear in mind this is all completely subjective and up for discussion *feel free to disagree* but I’ve got some issues with this article.. short answer, some companies just don’t want you to know who’s tweeting for them even if they’re doing a brilliant job and adding value to the community.. ( & does it matter, if they are upholding the brand values?)
What are my issues?
For some companies, I’m not going to name any to reinforce the point but let me just say that I know of at least one whose company tweets aren’t actually written by the company. I know, sounds a bit weird doesn’t it? So who’s doing it then? It could be the advertising agency working on behalf of the company for example. This may sound unethical but I believe it’s potentially far more prevalent than we know. It could be a dude sitting in his pants? Are there problems with this? Well, yes and no.
Yes because one of the crux issues about the social media revolution is transparency and knowing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth but at the same time No because the company may not have the resources, knowledge, time or inclination to get involved. However, they feel like they have to have a presence on this all new fangled thing called the internet and now Twitter. With that in mind, you’d never have a bio page with info and photos of the person or people managing the company’s Twitter feed.
Are brands that are using in Twitter in this way not ‘human’ as a result?
I fully encourage brands to get on board with Twitter and I certainly believe the more, the merrier. For them to succeed they can’t just shout at their customers / followers, they need to talk to them, engage with them and add value. However they choose to do it, they have to be always learning, taking lessons from past successes and more importantly failures on how not to tweet. If, whilst adhering to brand guidelines it’s a student updating a brand’s Twitter feed, and that works, whose going to know? He/she might do a better job than any of the companies employers, hence the reason why he/she has the job to do so.
You mention what’s the significance to you as a follower in having a brand in your following list..
For me to follow a brand, I would ordinarily be a consumer of their products or services already, and have or have had positive experiences with them. I feel a certain affinity towards their brand because of my own experiences with them, which perhaps I want to share and didn’t have the place to do that before. Similarly, I’ve found Twitter is a fantastic way of breaking down the barriers of communication when things have gone wrong. A few examples for you..
1) Blog host, Dreamhost picked up on a tweet where I said something along the lines of “Dreamhost? Nightmare host more like.” (I’d been having daily server outages for some time and it was starting to annoy. So I commend them for picking up on that and getting in touch. I would quite probably have kept stewing had they not nipped it in the bud.
2) Research house, Econsultancy. Because of their presence on Twitter, this saved another annoyed customer, whereby a colleague of mine wasn’t able to login to their account and was told that Econ would call them back soon to rectify the problem. They didn’t. Suffice to say said colleague was a little frustrated, promises are one thing, failed promises are another. So what did he do? He did a bit of research and found their Twitter account, sent them a DM and lo and behold got a call back within 5 minutes.Wow.
Neither of these companies Twitter accounts had a human face on their profile or bio but they still did the job fantastically well.
One final albeit minor point is the person at the end of the tweeting might change so regularly that it’s more work to be updating the profile image / background image than it’s worth.
Food for thought I hope?
Kaye Dennan 01.14.09 at 2:22 am
Hey, Tom, I don’t know about all this Twitter stuff yet. I find that I can waste so much time with all the social media connects. Not that I don’t like too, but I am a professional writer and find half the day has gone (like today) and I just don’t get enough of my money making done. Purely and simply because of time I keep my Twitter connect to business only.