But if you are a small to medium business, trying to make a go of things. Make sure you get paged with the important keywords and let the rest be answered in the morning. People understand. But if you are running an event (like a festival or a conference) be sure to have someone monitoring the twitterverse during that time responding to all requests/mentions.

Kelly,
Personal communication, where did it go? It’s still there, Twitter in this case (facebook and the other social networks in other cases) can never replace personal face to face communication. However they can augment it. Just like phone calls will never replace the face to face connection yet what 13 year old girl doesn’t spend hours on the phone? Similarly the social gatherings that are coordinated via online tools are where the real connection points happen, the conversation online just supports that connection.

And it also extends your reach globally!

Twitter might not be here to stay (anyone remember Altavista being over taken by Google) but the concept of micro-blogging will not go away soon. This may be new to you but it’s been around for over 5 years gaining support and traction. It exploded in popularity last year. (70% of all twitter accounts on Jan 1 of 2009 were created in 2008)

Mark, I totally agree, tweetdeck has saved me many many times the frustration of consuming twitter… but they are seriously lacking multiple account support. Go here to cast your vote and tell them how important you think it is: http://tweetdeck.uservoice.com/

I should preface my comments by stating that I am on Twitter, and yes, I have found my share of useful information. It has served as a beneficial tool for me, though I have recently discovered feelings of contradiction.

There was one specific point you made that struck a chord with me, and I think it’s something I’ve been internally struggling with for some time. You mentioned that “an internal HR employee could communicate with their employees or their sales staff via twitter.” It makes perfect sense to use Twitter as an employee, quickly disseminating info to an internal team, but it makes me wonder “where did the personal communication disappear to?” So much of “relationship-building” is now done online, but how sustainable are those relationships? Where is the soul behind them (or the soul to social media?)

Aside from my uncertainties, I’m also wondering if anyone has commented on the longevity of Twitter? Not that I’m doubting its existence, just purley curious.

I’m sure there is a time and a place for when to use Twitter and when not to use Twitter, but regarding your comments on the HR employee, I do wonder if face-to-face engagement between two people has become a thing of the past? I would like to think (hope) not.

In last week’s social media gathering, it was discussed that some organizations have decided that if you are unable to respond to a tweet within thirty minutes, you should not respond at all. We have chosen not to adopt this policy and do our best to respond to all comments (though we do strive for timeliness), but I wondered if there is any rationale for one position over the other. From a PR policy, I think it makes sense to always respond when possible as a late response has generally been perceived more positively than ignoring an individual. And what about comments received over the weekend?

For a period, we were scheduling tweets over the weekend to continue a 7-day communication with the public, but ran into issues with negative responses that were not addressed within a 24-hour timeframe. Should businesses be hiring individuals to tweet 7-days a week or is it acceptable to the public to tweet just 5 days a week?

regarding their situation and twitter, I look at it this way: you have your personal account, now I would create a person behind the brand account and a brand account, the brand account can just be a channel for normal PR releases and really an account for people to direct questions etc to.

The person behind the brand account for the school should be doing searches on twitter, finding people to connect with etc. They should be linked to from the website and the facebook page, we’re trying to connect with prospective students, alumni, parents, etc. where they are at.

But like I mention in part three of this series, what is their goal? I have seen a school in West Michigan use their brand twitter account to release information about school fights or cancellations, or general concerns for parents. This way the parents know by the time they get home what went on at school affecting all of the students etc. In this case the goal was for parental communication. Not for attracting new students or discussions at all.

What is their goal?

Blogs will be a really good addition to the strategy, and twitter could help that (twitter can increase blog readership.) But whose twittering about those blogs? how deep is their network? who is in their network?

Lots of questions, very few answers. But I hope enough information to keep you headed down the right path.

Good to see you here Bob, I look forward to more interaction!

The entity (a private school) just launched: a faceBook Fan (Group) site, a much more dynamic web site, and is planning to do a traditional (mail) outreach to alumni in order to (1) drive them to the FB Group, (2) drive them to an alumni link on the new web site, (3) lay the foundation for alumni fundraising, and (4) bring the school up the list on web searches.

I’ve introduced the school to a couple of national school search sites and encouraged cross-linking with the new school site, and I’m going to float the idea that younger parents launch a regional blog or two in order to drive more traffic to the web site.

How can I use Twitter to tie this effort together, or is there a better process (your 3-account approach) to build this?