Advice to a Brand using Twitter
I reviewed 10 brands using Twitter and found most of them are using the service to publish alerts and special deals. Occasionally, they will infuse their personality into their tweet stream but with much less frequency than imagined. I continue to read how brands and their agencies invest in influencer models to determine who is important. I think there is an even greater opportunity to focus on the content that these brands are sharing on Twitter. Now that a brand has a forum in which to talk, what will it say?
An influential blog post recently suggested that brands should skip blogging in order to microblog. I think that’s a bad suggestion for many reasons. Having a blog provides a brand with context inside of social media. Whereas a microblog provides the opportunity to share short thoughts, what happens if a potential customer is interested in exploring those ideas in more depth? Should they click on a corporate website? No. They should be able to visit the brand’s blog, a place where ideas are shared between brand and customer and the conversation that began on social media can continue.
I was surprised by the lack of brands whose Twitter bio linked to a blog or a personalized landing page. For the most part, the Twitter bios linked directly to the brand’s homepage such as with JetBlue. This is a huge, missed opportunity. At the very least, a brand can create a custom headline: “Welcome twitter friend,” as my friend Steve has done with his blog. In the best-case scenario, the brand can celebrate its Twitter fans on a custom-landing page, flex some blog bling, like its Twitter Grader rank report or a Tweet Cloud.
When a brand’s bio sends someone from a Twitter account to their homepage it’s the equivalent of having a quiet, personal conversation with someone at a restaurant and walking into their house to have them yell at you. Dear Brand, don’t yell at me.
Carolina Fowler contributed to this research.
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I was very interested in the notion of linking one’s profile page on twitter to a specific/custom landing page on your primary website.
That sounds like it could be a good idea.
My one concern would be: When visitors to a twitter profile click on the website link, are they expecting to learn more about the company/offering or more about the individual? Does the intermediate page just get in the way?
Comment by Dharmesh Shah — October 23, 2008 @ 6:51 pm
[...] (By the way, I found out about Steve because of QuiverAndQuill.com’s Advice to a Brand using Twitter.) [...]
Pingback by Twitter and the Social Media Musician - Manuel Viloria.com — October 23, 2008 @ 6:52 pm