We’ve learned over the years that sometimes Twitter can be your business bezzie, but sometimes, as individuals have discovered, it can land you in a pile of sticky bird mess. Does your business have a Social Media Policy that can reflect the different Twitter trends and legal issues and prevent any professional integrity loss?
Here’s 5 things you need to remember about that tiny blue bird:
1. Your employees are YOUR employees on Twitter – are they speaking in the right tone to reflect the company? What are they retweeting? What kind of views are they expressing? This is all perfectly fine of course, we’re allowed views! But generally speaking having the expression “All views are my own and do not reflect the views of XXXX(insert business name)XXXX” is a way of safeguarding against any disparity.
2. Another suggestion is for employees (and employers for that matter) to have a separate corporate and personal account. This again clearly separates the two brands.
3. Someone with over 500 followers is considered a “company” themselves! Wow – better watch those foul-mouthed football rants.
4. Everyone can see an argument – if you’ve had some negative customer feedback, make sure you can respond in a company appropriate manner. Simply responding with something negative yourself may feel justified at the time, but remember that everyone can see your response too – and even if you later delete a tweet, there is such a lovely thing as a screen shot that will last longer than your apology.
5. Be present! Often you see customers criticising companies for not replying at all to their complaints or requests for help. Depending on the size of the business this can be a mammoth task, but if it’s something that needs to be looked at, Twitter is the closest and fastest tool for feedback, so don’t let it hang in the air. But this does not mean reply after a few after work beers at 1 am either.
