There is no such thing as a Twitter Strategy – supporting perspective in Ad Age post

By racetalk

April 14th, 2009

A few days after I posted the succinctly titled “There is no such thing as a Twitter Strategy but you should have clear expectations for your corporate Twitter profile“, B.L. Ochman posted “Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn’t Tweet” on the Ad Age DigitalNext blog.

Right up there at number 1:

“You think using Twitter is a social-media strategy. It’s a tactic, a tool, not a strategy.”

Now my post elicited some responses via Twitter (@sheldrake) questioning my definition of the word “strategy”. So for clarity… your social Web strategy is the long-term “how” that follows the “what” of your social Web objectives.

I also agree with number 2 on the Ad Age post… if “every tweet has to be approved by legal” then your organisation is not ready for the social Web let alone little old Twitter. (I’d also argue that you’re most likely not ready to do business in 2009!)

And at number 3, Ochman’s post picks up on the second issue teased out in my post, that of setting clear expectations for your corporate Twitter profile. To paraphrase, herein lies the danger that Twitter is adopted for monologue rather than dialogue. But employed wisely as per my last post, with real people on hand to pick up on the conversation, the corporate Twitter profile can be an appropriate flag waver and conversation starter.

Of course, the social Web is about people, and not information technology. So it would be good to see Ad Age adopting so-called pretty URLs that people can understand than the incomprehensible ones they have today.

So rather than:

http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=135827

they ‘d have:

..//adage.com/digitalnext/top_10_reasons_your_company_probably_shouldnt_tweet

Entry Filed under: Digital media relations, Social Media, Twitter