Are You Ready to Tweet?

I like this post from Mikey Ames of TechHermit about his response to an inquiry about whether a University president should tweet. What I liked in particular was his rundown of which ones are tweeting and how well they’re doing. Too often, I think, we hear that so-and-so CEO or celebrity or muckety muck is tweeting.

Mikey answers the “so, what” about that statement. Anyone can create a Twitter account, but are they astroturfing, is their account simply a logo using by a communications staffer to basically send out press releases. Or is this person person and organization authentically engaged in a real conversations?

Here’s Mikey’s description of one particularly good University prez tweeter:

http://twitter.com/johnmaeda – Rhode Island School of Design, President Maeda is extremely engaging, uses the tool well. Intentionally follows others and has a huge following because of his obvious transparency and willing to use twitter as it was intended. Notice all the Retweets and questions and @replies. This user has actual clout and influence in the tool. He likely never has anyone else share his feed. He has completely embraced it as part of his daily rhythm.

If one thinks about Twitter as a conversation and not a tool than the question of if your organization should use it becomes clearer. Use it if you are ready and willing to engage in conversation. If it’s a new fangled fax machine for press releases than please don’t, the airwaves are crowded enough.

The bottom line is that no everyone needs to use every social media tool (although I hope that they’ll try them all!) But whichever ones you choose to use you need to follow the basic principles of social media use: be yourself (as Oscar Wilde said, “be yourself, everyone else is taken”), engage in two-way conversations, listen and learn.

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