“Seven Rules for Establishing a Corporate Presence on Twitter” Plus Two

Nice little post by Joel Postman at Socialized PR offers seven rules for establishing a corporate presence on Twitter:

• Create a Twitter profile that helps people verify your legitimacy
• Let consumers know who they’re talking to
• Empower your Twitter representative to make a difference
• Protect consumer information
• Include your social media affiliations on your corporate website news page
• Be human, and have a sense of humor
• Turn control over to “regular” employees

I like Joel’s style. He admits there are other rules that he’s not covering, that these are just the ones he feels most strongly about, and welcomes suggestions from others. He also provides examples of companies he thinks are doing it right. They are, for the most part, the ones we hear about often; but I think it’s good to repeat the better examples, given that Twitter is still new for so many people/companies.

There are two other guidelines (I prefer guideline vs. rule) that I’d add to Joel’s list:

• Use Twitter to communicate not to sell
• Be authentic

Yes, there are definitely more guidelines that we could add to the list, but “communicating not selling” is really big in my book. Most people don’t like a hard sell, and they dislike it even more in the social media realm.  (Yes, I’m someone who is turned off by hard-selling, so I’m biased. It really annoys me, especially on Twitter.) That said, if you disguise your selling as communicating, people will figure it out and not like it and be even more annoyed. Hence, I included being authentic as a top guideline.

Yes, businesses on Twitter and other communities ultimately want to improve their bottom lines. Customers/clients understand this, but followers would rather companies do it by delivering good customer service, sharing useful information, and providing other similar customer-oriented Tweets. After all, that’s that what good business is really about — the customer.

So be good at what you do. Be customer oriented. And be authentic. And carry all of these components into Twitter (and other social media endeavors for that matter). If you do, your odds for success will be a lot higher — which leads to another guideline: know your goal(s) before you establish your presence (okay, so it really was “Plus Three)

Read “Seven Rules for Establishing a Corporate Presence on Twitter“