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Welcome to Melcrum's Social Media Newsletter and our first issue for 2008.
Have you heard of Twitter? If not, then now’s the perfect time to start learning.
Twitter is the latest web-based social media application that’s been gaining momentum since it’s launch in 2006, and this year many people are predicting big things for the service.
The Twitter lowdown
There's a few ways to describe Twitter:
- micro-blogging (you can only write 140 characters at a time – similar to an SMS message);
- mass instant messaging;
- a social network; and many other things to boot.
At its heart, Twitter allows you to communicate and keep in touch with a designated group of people – wherever you all might be in the world – in short, rapid bursts, whether from desktop PC, laptop, or even a mobile phone.
Business uses
In a corporate environment this could mean companywide updates in times of emergency, or members of a sales team effortlessly keeping one other updated with their progress and status following a meeting or critically important phone call. For personal use it can mean just keeping up with your friends and contacts – “declarative living”, if you will.
Integrate your accounts
Since Twitter was launched, users and developers have created numerous plugins and free programs that enable you to integrate the application with your Facebook and Skype accounts. You can cross-publish links to your latest blog posts, link to web pages of interest, or send questions to your network and get rapid responses. The possibilities are many.
A growing trend
So, is Twitter the next internet craze or a potentially useful communications tool – internally and externally?
Quite likely the answer will soon be “both”. In the last year, politicians in the US and the UK have both used the service to keep supporters updated.
By no means is Twitter perfect, or even ready for an absolute primetime blitz along the lines of Facebook in 2007. It runs into issues faced by other social media tools: the security and privacy concerns; an inability, currently, to integrate with your enterprise platforms; unstable servers; and the tendency to extract low laughs from workmates when you suggest they get “tweeting” (yes, that’s the verb that’s been coined…).
But, as with other social media tools, look beyond the hype and the zany name, examine opportunities for real-world use, and relevant ideas begin to emerge.
Think ahead
If you want to get ahead of the curve and discover what’s undoubtedly going to be an important form of communication in the years to come (IBM are reportedly testing a business version), then it’s time to get involved.
And, if you want to try Twitter but keep it private, you can make your Twitter update feed viewable to approved people only.
Best regards,
Alex Manchester
Editor
alex.manchester@melcrum.com
Melcrum's special PDF report, Internal Branding: How to create and sustain a successful internal brand, shows you how to implement a successful internal brand and demonstrates how this will lead to improved engagement scores in your company. Written by engagement expert David Grossman, it walks you through |
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About
Melcrum
Melcrum is
a research and training business, expert in all aspects of
internal communication. Through our global networks, we connect
more than 18,000 professional communicators in sharing what
works. We produce benchmarking research, periodicals, reports,
membership websites and CD-ROMs and run training courses,
conferences and workshops.