Twitter’s brilliance as a medium for sharing your thoughts on the latest PR gaffe, or what you thought of last night’s TV, is well-documented. The platform has become a constant in the lives of the media-friendly and the over-chatty.

 

But turning its potential towards corporate ends is less straightforward. Given the often rambling, freeform discussion that Twitter engenders, how can brands make it work for them?

 

At this year’s SXSW, Ross Morrison of Huge, Inc. and Chapin Clark of advertising agency R/ GA hosted a panel session entitled ‘Being Funny on Twitter (Without Getting Fired)’, tackling the thorny question of how to inject a sense of personality into corporate Twitter accounts. Too often, companyrun accounts devolve into broadcast of news and information – which, whilst a good resource for many followers, fails to engage readers or harness the potential for interaction Twitter offers.

 

Morrison and Clark cited the potential of humour to “bring warmth and humanity to your brand”, and advised that for companies where the use of humour is appropriate – and for example, it isn’t for financial services or government accounts – it’s important to be true to your brand messaging. The key is to add to the conversation, by avoiding constant selfpromotion and acknowledging the wider audience being addressed.

 

Another crucial point for corporate Twitter use is that if you have any doubts about the message, and if you’re spending half an hour or so composing it, then you’re not using the medium properly – the best tweets are spontaneous and encourage reactions.

 

Twitter is indeed rife with potential pitfalls. Last year the ITV staff member with responsibility for the official account @itv_news accidentally (we assume) sent a message denigrating Nigella Lawson’s attractiveness to some 13,000 followers, and other examples abound. But with careful management, corporate Twitter accounts can humanise your brand and help you understand your stakeholders better.

 

We’ve picked out some of the best examples of corporate Twitter accounts, demonstrating uses from proactive media relations to responsive reputation management, and from projecting a personable corporate personality to build communities to positioning the brand as a green and ethical corporate citizen.

It seems that when brands take Twitter seriously and regard it as something more useful than a channel for broadcasting micro-press releases, it can go a long way to improving sentiment and achieving effective engagement.

 

 

The @JSainsbury Twitter feed is a dedicated account for the Sainsbury’s corporate communication team that is run separately from the more marketing focused @Sainsburys account. The objective is to develop a dialogue with key journalists, bloggers and other influential Twitterati and to monitor Twitter for customer sentiment towards Sainsbury’s brands and general retail trends.

 

The social media team behind @JSainsbury uses Hootsuite to manage Twitter posts and for day-to-day monitoring. Bigger trend and weekly/monthly reports are produced using Brandwatch and help Sainsbury’s keep an eye on what people are saying about the company.

Instead of simply copying the headline of a release, the account pulls out key facts or messages from the release to spark conversation and get people interested. It’s an effective ploy based on the reasoning that dry, corporate language won’t engage the audience.

 

During live events, the @JSainsbury account is particularly active. For panel discussions such as the recent ‘Future of Fairtrade’, questions were accepted through Twitter and answered by the panel, provoking debate on the service.

 

 

 

Unilever is another organisation to have realised the benefit of running multiple Twitter accounts that are clearly demarcated by purpose.

 

Its press account combines news releases – often pulling out an interesting hook from the story and putting it in the body of the tweet – along with personal interaction, a humanising touch which gives that all-important sense of a person behind the account.

 

Eleanor Bowden, press office executive at Unilever London, says that the Twitter account belongs to a wider strategy. “We want to build social media capability and experience in the global media relations team, mirroring changes in journalists’ habits and in the way our audience consumes information,” she says.

 

The account has already been put to use in gathering realtime data on Unilever’s reputation and perceptions of the brand, as well as engaging with opinion-formers through their preferred channel.

 

 

The Toyota brand has struggled in the last year to manage its reputation, in the wake of several crises – most memorably the recall of 8.5 million vehicles across the globe due to safety defects.

 

However, with the aid of the @Toyota account the brand’s image is gradually being restored, due to some very careful monitoring and swift responses.

 

The most recent example comes from a case that could have been yet another disaster for the car manufacturer’s reputation: a blogger received an email offering an Amazon gift card in exchange for positive coverage of Toyota, and although no direct connection with the business was definitively established in the email, it was strongly implied.

 

The blogger took to her Twitter account to denounce Toyota for what she saw as an attempt to buy positive coverage of their brand, and within hours #toyotafail was performing strongly in trending. The team monitoring the @Toyota account, however, was tracking the conversations around its brand and was able to respond quickly.

 

Given that Toyota had no official affiliation with the organisation that had sent the initial email, its swift response meant the sentiment surrounding Toyota on Twitter quickly swung back to positive and enhanced their online brand as honest and ready to engage.

 

Being able to interact with Twitter followers isn’t enough for corporate accounts – social media entails a compulsion to be alert and be visibly responsive in tracking conversations and honestly representing your brand. Without the diligent work of the @Toyota Twitter account and its handlers, Toyota could easily have had another communications crisis on its hands.

 

Reckitt Benckiser was singled out for praise recently during Radley Yeldar’s research into the embracing of social media by FTSE100 companies. Although the research showed that only 54% of the top 100 listed companies in the UK have Twitter accounts – and that only 23 of those post regular updates – Reckitt Benckiser seems to be bucking the overall trend of wavering commitment to social media by large cap companies.

 

The business has embraced Twitter for its recruitment potential, and seems to understand that corporate accounts aren’t there simply to link people to corporate websites. In fact, the company’s Twitter presence is clearly signposted on the main site, something of a rarity.

 

Whilst maintaining a steady flow of new jobs postings, @discoveryRB responds to jobseekers’ questions or asks them to email if they can’t be contained in 140 characters. The Twitter account also offers careers advice and RTs useful links to other careers websites. The account is also, crucially, fun, discussing recent events such as a shot-drinking competition of hot sauce, and displays a willingness to get involved with its audience that is refreshing.

 

Ecomagination is General Electric Co’s programme for the development and manufacture of environmentally friendly products. It’s a project that is astonishing in its scale and ambition – the company plans to invest $10 billion in it over the next five years – and the social networking strategy is integral to its success.

 

The @ecomagination Twitter account demonstrates a veracity for environmental news and development, posting links describing interesting new products and technologies around the globe: there’s also that key willingness to promote the work of other people, in the interests of furthering worldwide environmentalism, rather than concentrating on GE exclusively.

 

GE displays engagement, personality and genuine interest through this account, a rolling feed of which is also displayed on the main website. @ecomagination, whilst it discusses pioneering work in its sphere, also points to a new way forward for corporate communications of sustainability and of all business.