Jericho Brainy Breakfast Summary
October 2009 - Twitter Under the Microscope
At the final Jericho Brainy Breakfast for 2009 we were joined by two speakers who shared their valuable experience and learnings on Twitter - a subject for which the rule book has not yet been written.
Anthony Gardiner, Web Content Administrator, NZ Army, kicked things off with a Twitter 101, explaining how Twitter operates as a service, not a website, describing it as “the world’s biggest water cooler conversation”.
Anthony discussed how Twitter excels as a search engine for opinions, as a customer service platform, for seeding information to bloggers, and for spreading breaking news fast. He also explained how it could be used to great effect for promotions - highlighting promotional campaigns such as Levis’ ispylevis, and Air New Zealand’s airpoints fairy.
He also shared insight into the do’s and don’ts of Twitter etiquette, including no Twitter-spamming, no automated Tweeting (with the exception of auto-following people using particular key words of special interest to you) and the courtesy of acknowledging all feedback, negative as well as positive, and following people who follow you.
Duncan Blair, Head of Brand and Communications at Orcon, gave the sound advice that if you are going to use Twitter, you need to engage early, often and honestly. He explained how Orcon tweets in 5 distinct categories: Customer Support, Sharing (interesting web content and technology tit-bits), Informal Market Research, Personality and Participation (including lame jokes and inanity) and Promotional (Duncan’s advice: this should be less than 1% of tweets, if you’re going to do it, do it delicately).
He also laid out that there are no secrets or shortcuts to Twitter success – you need to be willing to commit to it (he dedicates up to 30% of his time to social media), and be interesting, relevant and have personality. But when used to its best effect, Twitter can be used to turn crisis into opportunity - addressing negative comments, and creating advocates instead.
The pair gave out some great practical tips, including, if you wondering what’s the best way for your company to get into Twitter, start by listening. They also shared some great services beyond twitter.com (which, if you weren’t taking notes, included tweetdeck.com, twhirl.org, twitterholic.com, twitterrific.com icerocket.com, tweetstats.com, search.twitter.com, and tweetbeep.com).
This event wrapped up the Jericho Brainy Breakfast series for 2009, but the series will be back in 2010. The Jericho Brainy Day is coming up on November 26, details on the workshops and speakers are available here.
Visit our Events and Training calendar for information on other upcoming events.
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