Social Thought Leadership Discussion Note 2: February 2010

Twitter: Critical To Social Thought Leadership Twitter Is Maturing – Are You?

Some of the most important activities in any Thought Leadership
programme are the publication of documents and social events
or meetings. Twitter can be a valuable tool in increasing the
circulations of publications, creating interest and attendance at
events, and by feeding in to printed and other media, creating
widespread interest in marketing activities. And it can do these
things at a lower cost than more conventional means involving
advertising, print and postage.
So at the first level, Twitter is a tool to reduce the cost of
marketing. And Twitter activity is measurable and provides a
detailed means of demonstrating progress and improving
efficiency and effectiveness.
Twitter has been around for four years. It’s not experimental any
more – it’s an established tool with usage rules and conventions
and an emerging best practice. Almost unprecedented for any
product in history, there are already 2,500 tools created to help
use, train, deploy, measure, manage, analyse and interpret
Twitter activity. Firms need to recognise when they engage with
Twitter – that it’s a maturing public forum and the Firm is open to
scrutiny when it starts to use Twitter.
It turns out that far too many large Firms are using Twitter “under
the radar” of close corporate scrutiny, and they are inadvertently
embarking on activities which turn out to be risky, dangerous or
in breach of multiple company policies.

Beyond The “Reduced Cost of Marketing” Be Considered – Approach Twitter Thoughtfully

There’s more to Twitter than reducing the cost of marketing. It is
not a social network – it is a messaging technology which can be
used as a part of the internal communications and corporate
communications toolsets. It can be used as a project
management tool and a research tool, an alerting system and an
intelligence gathering tool. It is famously also used as a
Customer Service and Product Design tool – an invaluable part
of some companies’ armoury.
So we are now advocating “The Considered Approach” to using
Twitter. It’s an approach which draws in various parts of the
organisation, from HR and legal to IT and marketing. It takes
time and coordination. It touches on important company policies
and ways of working, and can sometimes lead to a culture
change in the Firm in terms of providing information in a short
and reactive format. The business benefits though are
worthwhile: at the very least, a reduced cost of business.

Using Twitter – “The Considered Route”

Five Things To Do Before Writing Your First Tweet

1
Company Policies. There needs to be clear and approved guidelines for those who commit
content to Twitter on behalf of the Firm. These guidelines will ensure that Twitter activity is not in
breach of the Firm’s primary Company Policies, Terms of Business, Terms of Employment or
Publication Guidelines especially regarding confidentiality and tone.

2
Crisis Plan. This is a plan of action which includes escalation procedures so that when a Material
Adverse Event occurs online (an “Online MAE” or “OMAE”) the Firm knows how to identify and
recognise it as such and how to respond to it and has confidence that the response process has
been tested and would work in practice.

3
Monitoring. A tool or set of tools needs to be employed to effectively monitor Twitter comments
and links from tweets for potential OMAEs. The Firm cannot legitimately be in a position where it
comments in a public forum but has no reliable mechanism to observe and respond to the effects
of this comment.

4
Agenda. The Firm needs to prepare an agenda – a series of areas on which comment on Twitter is
to be encouraged and areas where it is to be avoided. There should also be a plan of action over
time and an agreed tone-of-voice so that tweets build over time to establish a reliable tone and
direction for followers.

5
Metrics. It is possible to see minute-by-minute metrics of a Firm’s online activity, from simple
outputs from Twitter to the effect of this activity on the Firm’s website: visits, downloads,
purchases, subscriptions, acceptance of invitations at events and so on. It’s valuable to decide
which are important, how Twitter influences them and, in time, to use them to set goals.

(c) The Conversation Group 2010 Social Thought Leadership Programme

Contact: Mark Adams mark@theconversationgroup.com