What’s your Twitter personality?

Many organisations are recognising that sites like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, can assist with digital engagement by providing simple and cost effective platforms to share their organisational messages with a diverse range of audiences.

But using these platforms to simply ‘broadcast’ messages, where news, policies and achievements are ‘pumped out’ in the hope that the public will ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ them for future updates, hugely underestimates the potential of these channels.

Assuming you want your organisation to avoid a situation where you’re giving users nothing more than a running monologue, it’s possible to encourage engagement and start a meaningful dialogue with users.

But what can organisations do to improve the level of engagement, interaction and interest across digital platforms, especially those which traditionally have potentially dry or policy led organisational messages? And just how much effort in terms of staff resource is required to deliver timely and engaging content?

We’ve summarised some of the digital personas we’ve seen being used by organisations across many social, community, blogging and microblogging websites, all of which should help you on the way to discovering the right approach for your organisation.

It’s by no means intended to be exhaustive or original, given the thousands of web pages dedicated to social media personas and the perceived value among practitioners, but example approaches include:

Passive news updates

One of the most common approaches – mainly because it’s cheapest and least resource sapping. This type of update is often used to broadcast little more than internal or PR department approved news, all pushed by the brand rather than an individual within the organisation.

Akin to a one way news or RSS feed, there is usually little interaction with readers – but sometimes going beyond the broadcast approach and engaging in two way conversation. These exceptions include the Dell Outlet Twitter feed, which posts ‘faceless’ company news, offers and customer service. It also claims to have made over $3million in sales via Twitter since 2007 according to Information Week. Irreverent brand Innocent Drinks goes further and has ditched a traditional corporate approach altogether to engage and interact with other users in a relaxed, but again anonymous brand facing way.

News and comment with a human face

Quite a powerful approach, this style of update can lift a potential dry corporate news feed by including an individual’s insight and sharing of promoting discussion. As long as the ‘human face’ involved is given the resources to update activity on a regular basis - much more than a snatched hour each week - this works well when an organisation wants to push how open and accessible it is.

A good example of this approach is the Twitter feed for Jennifer Cisney, Kodak’s Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager. Her friendly but professional approach results in an inclusive and accessible source of links to stunning photography, all of which is likely to encourage users to return. Other good examples include the personal photo approach of Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, and the more corporate Robin Goad of Hitwise UK, a Twitter feed which points to his corporate blog.

Personal comments from within

With less of a corporate feel, this approach is more common among respected players within an industry and as such use the writer’s own personal name as a Twitter tag rather than the organisation they work for. This more distanced and independent approach may convey more authority and authenticity for followers - but again, significant time and resource is needed to give this approach real authenticity, ideally from multiple people within an organisation. Feeds are less ‘tainted’ but the brand or employer still gains positive kudos from this growing ‘celebrity’ association. Wired magazine’s Ben Hammersly is a good example as is Mel Carson’s of Microsoft and the Guardian’s Charles Arthur.

Fictional comments / ‘celebrity’ endorsement

Technically, this approach lends itself to the personal approach with organisational association – only in this case, the individual doesn’t exist. While this approach has worked well for Comparethemarket.com’s fictional meerkat Alexandeer Orlov, the associated risks – such as negative PR after consumers fail to ‘get’ the joke or don’t warm to your ‘fun’ character – mean this approach is not for the faint hearted. The constant requirement for amusing and engaging activity also means significant resource is required for updates - perhaps even by a pool of writers.

Personal comments with a hidden agenda

There are tens or possibly even hundreds more classifications and insights into social media personas, but we hope the examples above provide you with good food for thought.

The more observant readers among you may have noticed that the list above doesn’t include the completely ‘personal’ Twitter account. There is a reason behind our omission.

Faced with a workforce increasingly intent on sharing their every sandwich filling and busy diary moan with the Twittersphere and blogosphere, many organisations have relented and actively embraced social media, to the extent where they’re encouraging employees to share organisational news and events through their network of online friends and colleagues.

While we applaud such forward thinking in the workplace, our advice to organisations who adopt this approach is simple: back up any such PR and communications plan with a clear social media policy which provides crystal clear guidance and rock solid ground rules.

When it comes to devising a social media marketing strategy, under no circumstances should an organisation be tempted to set up ‘personal’ Twitter, Facebook or blog accounts with a view to indirectly promoting the organisation among seemingly ‘personal’ tweets. As well as incurring the wrath of some fairly rabid bloggers, once this fake approach is found out, an organisation could also be threatened with legal action for unethical marketing practices.

To discover the right online marketing approach for your organisation, contact us.