October 26th, 2010Comments (0)

How to manage (and not mismanage) your branded Twitter handle – Part 1 by Jonathan Carl

Congratulations, you just registered @MyBrand and you’re now officially on Twitter. Now it’s time to gain ground on the notoriously fickle medium, carefully script tweets to sound like they aren’t scripted and explain to your boss why you don’t have 10,000 followers after your first week.

Good luck – here are a few general guidelines and pointers on what to do (and not do) with your brand’s Twitter handle.

Do: Write Tweets in a casual, friendly tone of voice, Don’t: Use Webspeak

Business speak is unwieldy, cumbersome and difficult to fit into 140 characters, and a medium like Twitter calls for a more conversational, friendly voice, so cutting and pasting from press releases isn’t effective on Twitter.

It is, however, not difficult to go from friendly and conversational to writing in Webspeak where all ur tweets lik dis n til no1 gets wat ur saying. If you think using Webspeak will help you reach a younger consumer base, take a look at three youth-oriented brands with more than 1.5 million followers each: Zappos.com online shoe store (@Zappos), Woot.com discount website (@Woot) and Threadless t-shirts (@Threadless) all use correct grammar and spelling. So there.

Do: Respond and follow for customer feedback, inquiries and complaints, Don’t: Respond to/follow everyone

Twitter is an amazing customer service and insight tool that allows companies to directly connect with their customers in real-time, receive valuable consumer feedback and get heads up on issues before they become problems. Jet Blue, the New York-based airline, joined Twitter in 2007 to help with customer service after they realized their customers were Tweeting about travel problems via smartphones and laptops at the airport. Today, @JetBlue has 1.6 million followers and the handle serves as a primary customer service resource.

Of course, not all tweets are constructive. Between spammers, hashtaggers, stalkers and swearaholics (more here), your feed can get bogged down with off-topic or unwanted messages. Responding to these messages or following their authors increase the noise that obscures your brand.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Twitter tips for your brand……

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