By now, you’ve probably read plenty of posts on BNET and elsewhere explaining why your company should consider embracing Twitter.
But if your firm can’t execute a proper Twitter strategy, it may be best to avoid the platform altogether.
Small Business IT Weekly has compiled a decent starter list of rookie mistakes made by businesses on Twitter. Here’s a summary, edited down for clarity:
1. Don’t think of it as a tool to talk at potential customers. Twitter is most useful for listening.
2. Don’t have someone tweet for the company owner.
3. Don’t bother with Twitter if you can’t monitor it 24/7.
4. Don’t use Twitter if you need to vet copy through several layers of staff and your corporate attorney.
5. Don’t even think about paying people to follow your tweets or stacking your followers with bogus people planting bogus tweets.
If you don’t have the resources to use Twitter correctly, the tool will be a time waster. Plus there’s that public relations nightmare lurking if your CEO’s “ghost Twitterer” decides to go rogue.
Sure, there’s lots of valuable data within the Twittersphere. But think about whether setting up a Twitter account is the most efficient way to collect it, since you can periodically search the Twitter network anyways without actually joining it.
After all, perhaps the next social media platform will be better suited to your company’s marketing objectives. Flutter, anyone?
(Twitter logo map by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, CC 2.0)
