30th
Proper Twitter/Blog Etiquette
Having the ability to sniff all of the social/blog/news chatter on your company is a great and powerful tool that I have talked about a lot previously. Now that I am getting all of the information in real time from all of the different sources the new dilemma is how do you react to it.
I have been trying to strike the balance of when to enter into the chat and when not to. Additionally what is appropriate to say. Here are the current rules that I am abiding by:
1. If I see a person talk about one of my competitors on Twitter I stay away from the conversation. Even though I might be able to get a customer to move to my service I feel that the twitter chatter while public has some certain un-written privacy rules to it.
2. If someone talks about PhoneTag or Voicemail to Text on Twitter then I will usually send a @ reply. If they are having an issue I will always contact them. If they are just talking openly about the product then depending on the context I decide whether or not to send a message to them. Sometimes I feel it is better to let the community handle the conversation without me.
3. When it comes to blogs I am overall more aggressive. I feel that blogs are a more open and less personal means of communication. Therefore almost no matter what someone writes in a blog, if there is a comment section I will try to add something. However I still will only communicate if I feel that I am adding some sort of value.
4. This is the cardinal rule. Always do the posts yourself. I believe it is very important that whoever is posting for the company, posts who they are. Having someone post for a CEO or on behalf of I think is worst then no post at all.
Additionally I have my email address and mobile phone number on our website.
As the traditional ways in which people handle issues and communications with companies changes I think that it is important to try and follow the customers and the chatter. The hard part is finding the boundaries and proper ways to enter yourself into these conversations without violating perceived etiquette.
What do you think?
