Vending Your Tweets

A great deal has been written about using Twitter for business. John Jantsch has a nice guide called “Using Twitter for Business” that I personally like and as a member of MarketingProfs, I recently downloaded the “Twitter Success Stories” whitepaper, which is nicely done. So, if you’re looking for general Twitter info, there’s plenty of guidance to go around.

What still puzzles me is when I hear stories of organizations that are “vending their tweets”. Namely, they are sending things to be twittered to their ad agency or to a consultant to have them post and monitor Twitter for them. I guess I can see the rationale, but I have a few reasons that I think that this process is less than ideal.

Maybe I’m being old fashioned, but when we started BlogSavant in 2004, we held the same position on blogging. It was something best done from inside. Sure, you could have lots of help, but the content had to come from you, and you had to monitor and respond accordingly. With each of these great new communication channels and opportunities comes the responsibility to manage them to your constituents’ expectations.

1. Sorry, but I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to engage on Twitter that you should engage on a personal level. Social media, for what its worth, is really about having human conversations online. I realize that your social media consultant is human, but if you’re trying to be open, transparent, honest and quick, and I’m sure that they’re all those things too, they are not those things ‘inside your company’ and don’t have the corporate DNA in them. Analogy: I you wouldn’t send me to a networking meeting to meet people on your behalf, so I won’t tweet on your behalf either.

2. Trust is built, in social media, in part by knowing who you’re dealing with and forming a relationship with them. In no small part is social media helping to build trust in organizations. (take what Comcast is doing on Twitter – helping customers out online). Trust of you is a proxy for trust of the company. Trust of your social media consultant, IMHO, is not a good proxy for trust of your organization.

3. Response time & decisions in Twitter (and I’m not the best at this by any stretch) are best managed by a steward of the organization, inside the organization. When someone emails you, they expect you to respond. (generally, though that’s not always the case, and it’s acceptable to have an admin do your email) Further, when someone replies or DMs you in Twitter, they have every expectation that it’s going to you, and that you have the organizational domain expertise to respond appropriately.

4. You’re short circuiting your social media learning curve and missing out on the essentials of how this stuff works. There are only a few ways that people learn things. They learn by doing, teaching, watching, and the like. They do not normally learn by outsourcing. If social media relations are something that you’re trying to ‘evolve into the DNA’ of your organization, vending your tweets is not part of the process of evolution and cuts you out of the important lessons that all social media marketers need to learn about engaging in the media. Sorry (again) but I’m bullish on “if you’re going to engage in social media”, sure, you can have (lots of) help, but you need to carry on the conversation from within the organization, not from outside it.

Now, I know that there will be objections to this. Here are a few possible ones, and, of course, my responses to them.

1. I don’t have time. Really? You don’t? Do you know how long it takes to effectively engage on Twitter? (again, I’m not always the best example…but I know lots of people who are . It’s not long. Refer to the aforementioned guides from MarketingProfs and Mr. Duct Tape for further guidance. It takes a few minutes a day…you spend more time in the bathroom than it takes to be useful on Twitter.

2. But…I’m a social media consultant, this is my business. No, your business is to be a useful guide to your clients. A consultant (from the Latin consultare means “to discuss” from which we also derive words such as consul and counsel) is a professional who provides advice in a particular area of expertise. (thanks, Wikipedia) Nowhere does it say that you need to usurp your client’s voice in social media. You’ll be helping them more by guiding them (and getting them excited about social media and asking you for more help). Yours is not a “task oriented” job…Twitter is a task oriented tool. Advise and then put the task in the hands of its rightful owner.

3. But, I don’t know what to say… This is an easy one. See 1) the aforementioned guides, 2) ask your social media consultant, 3) do a content/asset assessment to see just how much stuff your organization really has to say that your customers want to hear and 4) don’t say anything – just point people to useful things and focus on being helpful. Now that’s being social…

Finally, a bit on that last point. We had a social media planning session with a client this week where I expressed the need for them to “raise their CPA Quotient” (Content Potential Awareness Quotient). Which, in short, means that they need to look around their organization for all of the activity that they do on behalf of their customers and their industry that they should share in social media. “For it was not the fish who discovered the existence of water” comes to mind here. Until you dig in, you may have no idea how much valuable stuff you do that your customers/fans want to hear about.

Related posts:

1. The Five Dysfunctions of Social Media Marketing
2. Ten keys to social media success in 2010

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