I attended an IABC breakfast today that was all about Twitter. It's always good to go into these things and have what you thought you knew about something reinforced. Like, I know that blasting your audience on Twitter is a bad idea. So is not interacting with them with conversation or retweets. Accounts that simply want to put out their own message/promotion and never reply to their followers is not how Twitter works.Seems like if you're on Twitter, you know this, right? Not necessarily. I notice accounts (which I follow through work) that are always updating their statuses, and when I say hi, or comment on what they've posted, I get nothing. Now, I'm not their target audience....but it's kind of like being in a room with someone and being completely ignored. It's rude. Most people who use Twitter regularly know that, but I see accounts with a lot of followers who are there but are not there. It's particularly frustrating when you're trying to build up an account from scratch, interact with people everyday, and these present/non-present organizations on Twitter get followers without even trying. Now don't get me wrong, numbers don't mean you're being successful. It's about quality, not quantity, right? It's now expected that administrators reply to a customer complaint first on Twitter or Facebook, and second on emails and phone calls. This is the real direction we're moving.
I think it's important to put people in charge of social media within organizations rather than have someone who doesn't really know what they're doing take care of it. They need to be doing their own jobs anyway. These people don't have the time to be on Twitter all day engaging their followers. It's frustrating for them and frustrating for the follower. Twitter should be used for good and shouldn't be considered a hassle.
I really like the power of Twitter. Recently an Ottawa girl, Hélène Campbell, tweeted to Justin Bieber about organ donation. Hélène needs a double lung transplant, and decided to take action through Twitter. He retweeted her and the response was amazing. People actually signed up to be organ donors because Justin Bieber retweeted it. I heard about her when she was on Ellen last week. Hélène sent Ellen a video asking the same thing of her, to promote organ donation. Ellen was so moved by her optimism that she Skyped her and invited Hélène to dance with her after she had her surgery. This all started with one tweet to one famous celebrity who just happens to be one of the most influential people on Twitter. It's amazing how Twitter can connect us all.So let's get on the band wagon. Let's start posting more engaging content and use Twitter to connect with people. This should be a no brainer for organizations that want to know what people are saying about them. The future is looking bright and I'm just glad to be along for the ride.
