At this year’s Ideas Shop annual BarCamp, I presented on the do’s and don’ts of Twitter.

I conducted an opinion poll with my fellow Ideas Shop public relations consultants, on whether they still believed there are companies in New Zealand, who are not using or even aware of social media in the work place, and to my surprise they thought there were. 

There are in fact, a lot of small, medium and large organisations, who either underestimate the power of social media or think that a company’s reputation can’t possibly be affected by a meagre tweet.  

At BarCamp I found that a number of very savvy individuals from some very impressive organisations, were still finding themselves challenged by senior management around the importance of social media or had been using Twitter and didn’t know the real reason why. Here’s what I told my fellow BarCampers: 

Twitter do’s

• Listen first. See what other organisations are doing on Twitter – always be aware of your direct competition, sister companies, what your lovers and haters are up to, so you’re always conscious of potential risks/threats/opportunities around your brand.
• Use Twitter search engines for keyword searches – you should consistently be tracking what people are saying about your brand, market or client, good or bad.
• Follow people with similar interests to establish a brand presence – let yourself be known to those who matter to you.
• Be dedicated to Twitter – if you’re not tweeting regularly your followers will drop off.
• Ask questions and get feedback from your followers – it will make your followers feel valued.
• Engage followers with new ideas – try potential article ideas with your followers, see what they are really interested in.
• Follow the Blogger Code of Ethics within all things social media – be honest and fair, be accountable and minimise harm. 
• Respect other Twitter users – remember your followers are your clients, past, current or future.
• Think before you direct message – always take a few seconds and think, is this tweet necessary, and remember to use correct spelling and grammar. 
• Make sure your message directly relates to your intended audience. 
• Provide value to your followers – tweet an interesting article, event, or a social media tip that you learned.
• Spread the word about your participation on Twitter – let your clients know you’re involved in social media, attach your twitter address to your email signatures, blog, and to your website.

 Twitter don’ts

• Don’t use Twitter to push ads or brand messaging.
• Don’t be boring.
• Don't be fake.
• Do not tweet anything that you would not want to see published in the newspaper 

And for those of you, who would like to learn a bit more about twitter and its measureable tools, to help build a business case for management, checkout the following websites for more help:

Tweetbeep –  Google alerts for tweeter. Allows you to monitor conversations that mention you, your brand, related/competitor products and links to your website/blog.  

TwitterGrader – Measures the relative power and authority of a twitter user by calculating number of followers, network-power of followers, pace of updates and completeness of a user’s profile.

TweetDeck – A desktop application that lets you organise your followers into specific categories (i.e. industry leaders, customers, potential customers etc).