People that run Twitter accounts on behalf of brands often use their own usernames. Or a combination of both, like the pioneering RichardatDell, who was one of the first people worldwide to start using Twitter for his job.

Why do people take the personal approach? It is simply easier to engage with others as another person.

Also, there’s a deep psychological need in most of us to unite our different ‘selves’ if possible. To present to the world all we are. And if you are happy in your work, if your work is an expression of who you are as a person, you’re likely to be more inclined to combine your work and personal Tweets.

Being yourself on Twitter is easy (you don’t have to think too much) and has the added benefit of showing you as a more rounded, more real person.

But what if you move jobs?

Unlike many other online services (email, IM, etc), you can actually change your Twitter username and even your Twitter name. So you can use one account and adjust the name as you move between jobs.

What about the arguments that say you should have more than one Twitter account? One account for your professional and one for your personal life? Perhaps. We all have many different sides to our lives.

At one of our training courses, I met a marketing manager for a cosmetics brand who, in her spare time, ran a Twitter service dispensing sexual advice and tips. For her, having two separate accounts made absolute sense.

Luckily tools like Hootsuite now make it easy to manage many accounts (including Facebook & LinkedIn) at the same time. This is quite handy.

For me, Twitter is a firehose for all I have to say on media, South African politics and everything else. I’m on the wrong end of 30 and rarely do stupidly embarrassing stuff these days, so it’s ok. But still, Hootsuite allows me to direct more personal messages to Facebook, hard core business ones to LinkedIn.

Sorted.

‘Never mind the twitterati – and here, unusually, I agree with David Cameron – anyone suffering from the desire to communicate what they are doing or thinking every minute of the day in fewer than 140 characters is best described as a twat.’

Thus respected editor at large at the Independent – Janet Street Porter – asked about Twitter a few months ago.

Twitter - can it be good for business?

I have to say Twitter is the one social media tool we at RAAK get asked about most by businesses and ordinary people alike. What’s the point and is it good for me?

We have already explained on this blog why we think Twitter in its current incarnation is quite a different tool from Facebook. The difference is encapsulated in the principle, Everybody has got friends but not everybody is a media outlet.

This nature of Twitter – it is good for talking and even for – shock horror – broadcasting (to use Forrester’s language) – makes it well suited to be used by brands or people with something to say.

And the business world is realising this. Just three weeks ago it was reported that Twitter is the tool of choice for talking by Fortune 500 companies:

‘Nearly 50 percent of the top 100 companies have a Twitter account. Four of the top five corporations, Wal-Mart, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and General Electric, consistently post on their Twitter accounts. The top-ranked company, Exxon Mobil, does not have a Twitter account.’

These are much better stats than for corporate blogs, which at present are found at about 15% of these companies. Twitter’s strength lies partially in its simplicity. And unlike tools like blogs it’s relatively easy to use and quick to maintain.

But even if you’re not an opinionated thought leader, brand, artist or celeb, Twitter is a great tool.

For what I hear you ask? For listening: It’s great for finding potential clients, competitors, suppliers or partners.

And the combination of talking and listening with Twitter makes it an ideal tool for networking in general. On a par with LinkedIn in many respects.

In the next posts we’ll explain why Twitter is good for listening and talking and, first, a few practical tips for getting started.

All of these posts form part of RAAK’s Social Media course.

In 1892 in Budapest, a certain Tividar Puskas launched an exciting new service that used telephones to deliver radio programs to an audience. Initially he had 60 subscribers. Puskas thought telephones would make a great way to distribute information and entertainment, i.e. a great broadcast medium.

A stentor reading the day's news to 6200 subscribers - An image depicting the stentor of Telefon Hirmondó - April 1901

It was not to be. His service did manage to garner 15,000 subscribers by 1907, but died because we found a use for phones that is vastly more lucrative and valuable – namely talking to each other. One-to-one communication.

Since then one-to-one telephony has become one of the biggest industries around. The world’s largest telephone company AT&T is still much larger than Microsoft, Times Warner, or Google in terms of revenue. And there are much more telcos than there are large internet portals or entertainment companies.

But well before the telephone and the telegraph we already had forms of media that were interactive, conversational, one-to-one.

The town square, where people could meet and exchange information, was an old form of social interaction. The town hall speech, its one-to-many equivalent, was ‘broadcast’.

We have had one-to-one letters for hundreds of years, and more recently we had pamphlets (today’s flyers) through which to ‘broadcast’ our messages.

So what is different now? According to Clay Shirky it’s the technological changes of recent that have accelerated social interaction. Things that used to be hard to coordinate because they took time and were expensive to organise have become easier to do.

In other words, social media is not new, but what is new is that social technologies have lowered the cost and the barriers for entry. Now, everybody can be a media outlet.

At this moment, it’s not even clear whether they or their PR agency actually know that this is happening. But even if they did, they don’t have the (Social Media) tools to respond.
Paperchase doesn’t have a blog nor a Twitter account, so they can’t immediately react. Needless to say that’s a mistake.

To make a point, I thought it would be interesting to visualise a little crisis like that. So below is a screengrab of Twitter Trends half an hour ago. Quite powerful actually: to see what such a stream of bad PR looks like.

UPDATE

Today if you search for ‘paperchase’ this is what you get. That just goes to show that even though paperchase has responded via a press release and on their site (see below), their is still a very damaging link just below their own site.

Paperchase's search engine problem - Hidden Eloise - not so hidden

Paperchase claims they did respond to Hidden Eloise:

“The illustrator who is making the allegation made us aware of her concerns in November 2009 and we duly responded to her in early December, since when we had heard nothing … until today. Back in November 2009, we spoke at length to the design studio in question and they categorically denied any plagiarism.”

“It is worrying that such an allegation can create such reaction and again, Paperchase apologises for any ill-feeling caused.”

Regardless of the sequence of events, Paperchase should have been monitoring what’s being said about it online. Most free tools would have done the trick. And since the allegation was public, they needed to respond online and in public to it. That is where it matters. My bet is if they had, the story would have gone nowhere.

Now that the damage is done, Paperchase has tried to communicate by adapting their site’s contact page (see below). Once again, if they had some blogging functionality, they could at least have had a separate link. That would have shown their version of the story more prominently if somebody searched for them. They could have left a comment in Hidden Eloise blog and have had a track back.

The Paperchase contact page after crisis

So why are we starting a social media training course? We’ve been asked about social media, a lot.

Meet The Media Guru | Cory Doctorow by *Meet the Media Guru*

We’ve developed social media strategies for the World Economic Forum. We’ve given talks and training at Ketchum PR, Kroll, the Salzburg Global Seminar and Open Road PR. And recently we’ve been asked to give meta training – training at a company that does training.

Not long ago we wrote a blog post about new roles in communications. Social media will not only change marketing practise, it will impact the very structure of your business and organisation.

We have something unique to offer, which is a little different from all the above said courses. And what is that?

Strategic

We have a deep understanding of the historical trajectory of media change. Or put another way: we’re in the midst of the democratisation of media. Who knows where it will end?

Only knowing one tool like Twitter won’t help you spot a new one like Foursquare. We’ll impart to you the principles that will help you navigate and anticipate what might happen next.

We’re into creative practise

Don’t confuse that with zany or brooding. We’ll help you think outside the box, but deliver practical solutions.
What is a good example of digital creativity? Matt Cutts of Google explains in this video how you can get your website seen and linked to by spending only $100. That’s geeky and useful creativity for you.

In short, we think our courses will enable anybody with a passion for communication and an open mind to explore social media for themselves in a focused way.

When creating our course we looked carefully at what is out there already.
As a result we ended up creating three courses:

1. One course is social media for PR people. Of the old media marketing configuration (PR, Advertising,…) we think public relations is best placed to do social media. In our experience many PR practitioners lack insights about why social media works and how to actually do it.
2. One is social media training for leaders, like CEOs and Entrepreneurs. This is a strategic course about how best to manage social media in a world where everybody is a media outlet.
3. And then we have a hands-on practical in-house social media course. Because ultimately Social Media is best done by organisations themselves.

We welcome any feedback on these courses and anticipate adapting them over time.

Trafigura

The week kicked off on Tuesday morning with London law firm Cater-Ruck attempting to silence the UK Guardian from reporting a question in parliament. The Guardian led the next day with a story that was nothing less than a red rag to a raging bull:

“The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.”

Guardian editor Alan Rusbriger is social media savvy.

The Guardian knew full well and anticipated that this paragraph is just the kind of challenge the Twitter hoards adore. Us against the rich bastard lawyers. The formula works thus:

• Tell us there is a secret.
• Tell us it’s significant.
• Leave enough of a hint on where to find it.

What happened next is now media history.

Suffice to say that by lunch time the next day Carter-Ruck had given up on their quest for the continuance of the injunction, while both they and the firm which they sought to protect – Trafigura – became Twitter trending topics.

The Minton report, an internal report by the Trafigura (which itself had found its way to Wikileaks), which they also had sought to repress, was discovered, found and retweeted far and wide.

Alan Rusbridger on Trafigura

For Jeff Jarvis, always good with conjuring up a memorable one-liner, the take away was summed up in a Tweet:

@jeffjarvis: New rule in new age:The harder one tries to hide a fact, the more light others will shed on it. http://bit.ly/qXDoi

Tube incident

Two days later. Another two social media uprisings.

“A TfL (that’s Transport for London for any of you who have not had the unabated pleasure of using its services) employee is filmed swearing at and threatening an elderly passenger on the London Underground.

The film is posted online and picked up by Twitter members. It emerges that the employee in question is called Ian (and he doesn’t protect his Facebook profile, stupidly) and comes to the attention of the Mayor of London. He asks TfL to investigate and TfL apparently suspends the employee.”

Tube incident

The camera operator who Tweets at jmacdonald also recounted what happened on his blog.

About 30 seconds later the doors opened again and he removed his arm.

I watched as he calmly relayed his experience to the staff member (who was called Ian by the way).

Ian didn’t think it was a problem – in fact, he was furious that the guy had mentioned it at all, especially as the guy was standing close to the track.

After a while, Ian started shouting at the guy to “stand back there is a fucking train approaching“.

Savvy jmacdonald pans upward to record where & when the incident took place.

Jan Moir

On the same day Jan Moir writes a hurtful article about the death of Steven Gately in the Daily Mail, intimating that his gay lifestyle was to blame. Twitter denizens mobilise again. By today more than 22,000 have complained to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), more complaints than it has received in 5 years.

On Friday advertisers including Marks & Spencer demanded that their advertising be removed from the webpage on which Moir’s piece was published, although Mail Online had already taken the decision to remove banner ads.

Moir, who has won a British Press Award, made a statement defending her column late on Friday, saying it was not her intention to offend, blaming a “heavily orchestrated internet campaign” for the furore and adding that it was “mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones”.

Presumably comedian Stephen Fry – who has one of the larger Twitter followings in the UK – and who came out strongly criticising Moir is seen as one of the fire starters.

Stephen Fry on Jan Moir

Paul Bradshaw, online journalism lecturer and blogger, has set out to try to understand how “orchestrated” this “campaign” has really been. And he has asked for others to help him establish that, including the online crowdsourcing investigative site – Help me investigate. One of the comments he has received to his call reads:

“I’m an admin on the fb group alongside Stella. I can confirm there was nothing orchestrated about the facebook campaign – it happened pretty much as others have outlined above. I don’t think any of us expected quite so many people to join in such a small space of time! What has been particularly amazing to me are the spin off activities that have resulted from people posting on the wall. For example, there is a petition to BA to stop handing out free copies of the Daily Mail – which arose (as far as I can tell) as a direct result of people talking on the original FB group. There are a number of other linked groups and activities – difficult to keep up with them all! This is grassroots organisation facilitated by a social networking site, nothing more sinister than that.

PS: I don’t use Twitter and neither does Stella as far as I know.”

It’s alive!

It’s all very exciting. With each of these incidents, the public’s awareness of using social media to mobilise is growing. And so is the sophistication of their use of social media tools.

Social media is far more significant far sooner than I ever anticipated. It’s mobocracy – and I like it.

Interestingly enough, two of the incidents were started by reports (or suggestions) in the press. The other one by a member of the public, who blogs, Tweets and is handy with a cam.

One tweet I saw this week said:

@dannyrogers2001: #Trafigura the perfect modern media case study. Social media influential but ‘old’ media (Guardian) drives agenda.

That is wishful thinking. It’s more of a symbiosis me thinks. ‘Old’ media sets out a stall for many agendas on a daily basis. But so does social media. And in an ever-increasing fashion.

But it’s ultimately the people who decide which agenda goes stellar.

And not just in one way. In two.

In a previous life, we built a website, blog and e-commerce solution for WHERE, a new and exciting (ethical) fashion brand. And last week they asked us to advice them on an ongoing basis on how to use the right social media tools.

Good on them. Good for us.

So now we make sure they have access to the right tools, use them well and that their website is in great SEO shape. We also double-check their blog posts and tweets if needed. And listen for them. That all makes it easy for them to be up-to-date, found and be part of the conversation.

But as with most new things, it was a particularly interesting exercise in how to quantify this service, a problem that was also mentioned in Jason Falls’ very decent blogpost about the culture clash between Social Media and Ad agencies and in Jay Bear‘s comments on that post.

It’s not that straightforward to bill or staff for.

Because Social Media is about knowing the brand through-and-through-and-through. And through.

And, ideally, about being part of a brand 24/7, because your crowd doesn’t stop talking about you. Which means that even reacting quickly to a crisis can be a bit late – as Domino’s Pizza recently discovered.

Thirdly, it works best when you have the power to make day-to-day decisions without having to go through layers of sign-off procedures.

Based on those thoughts, I can see two models working:
1. A retainer model (we prefer to call it the ‘plug-in‘ model) where you’re really close to the brand (or the organisation) and you guide them on a day-to-day basis. This is more suitable for small to medium-sized companies, who can’t afford to hire a full-time person and trust you to do what is needed.
Will this be easily scalable when the brand becomes bigger? Possibly not. Option 2 might then make more sense.

2. A training model, which aims not only at consulting, but also at teaching key people at various levels. Those key people could be CEO’s as well as Brand & Product Managers. It could be someone from the Marketing department, a customer service rep or even a developer. Anyone who’s into and understands the medium and is keen to take on the role of ‘Social Media Administrator’.

Importantly, this training course should not only be on a strategic level, because Social Media is about ‘doing’ it. In other words, how you write a blogpost, what keywords you use, how to craft a Tweet, how to produce good audio for video. The list goes on.

For now, we use option 1 for WHERE. And we’re currently developing option 2 into a workshop about ‘Social Media in PR’, about which we’ll write some more soon.

Exciting times! And we’ll see if these options still stand in a year’s time. Or even in a few months.

[View with PicLens]

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RAAK was very excited to work with an ethical brand like WHERE. The authenticity and ability to cut out middlemen than new media technologies provide made them an ideal choice for addressing WHERE’s business needs.

We built an integrated blog and shop. And we then trained WHERE on how to interact with their potential customers using their blog. AND we also trained WHERE in the use of Twitter to promote their blog, shop and products.

Central to WHERE’s brand identity is the idea that one should be aware of the location the products are produced.

We built that into the WHERE blog. All posts can be categorised with the location of where products were produced.

But princely the blog serves the purpose of talking about the brand and what the company does with prospective customers.

This includes posts about the whole production process, including moodboards, production facilities, but also anything that tickles WHERE’s fancy. In other words the blog gives the WHERE brand a personality.

We continue to work with WHERE to improve their blog and social media strategy and you can follow WHERE on Twitter.