Twitter Business and Copywriting
by John Holman
If you haven’t heard of Twitter then you probably live in another world. A world where the Internet and the explosion in social networking sites doesn’t exist.
Twitter is being touted as a major business communication tool — a tool that will help organisations, business execs and me become très cool by linking us with millions of customers and potential customers who use this fast expanding social network. The idea, similar to viral marketing, is to seed a thought, a product or service, growing it into the mainstream over time, but in a subtle manner.
The Twitter people say real life happens between blog posts and emails and a huge hunk of the world seems to agree. On Twitter, life happens in one hundred and forty character bites — that’s the maximise size for each post.
So does copywriting matter if you’re only dealing with 140 characters? Well, given our business focus, what do you think?
Writing those pithy little messages to help grow a brand or develop an exec’s image obviously requires more than a modicum of writing skills. In fact, it also requires a significant understanding of the environment. So, it’s been quite a surprise reading the increasing number of stories about inept tweets – a tweet is Twitter speak for a post – by organisations who are blindly flogging products or services without a thought for the most basic marketing-101 rules surrounding ‘Place’ and ‘Target Audience’.
Twitter, as well as blogs and other social media sites, is being increasingly scanned by organisations in order to monitor comments about their products, services and staff. This allows them to jump on any adverse commentary or use growing positives to better focus their communication.
Understanding the medium and targeting it appropriately, like in any good campaign, is key. So, when is the best time to tweet for maximum twitter traffic and exposure? To tell the truth, I ain’t got a clue. I do know however, that business people who toss out rash one-liners are probably not best served by Twitter. It’s one of those things that seems easier than it is, which I think is a major trap, especially for execs with a penchant for rapid-fire communication.
To drive my point home take a look at this — Twitter has just released ExecTweets Find and follow top business execs on Twitter. Because it’s everybody’s business — and then tell me most of these guys don’t need a professional copywriter writing their tweets.
BTW, I’ve also read there’s an iPhone version in the works — soon we’ll be able to instantly tweet and re-tweet about the traffic lights at Sussex and George and the guy who just gave us the finger because we were tweeting instead of driving.
‘Nuf said.