You're doing it wrong: Twitter (the command-and-control edition)

Earlier this month, I wrote about a non-profit who wanted to jump onto the Twitter bandwagon without really understanding the tool or having a strategy for using it.

See “So you’re going to join Twitter…” for a refresher.

Well, they must not have been reading my blog (not surprising since my current audience would probably fit in my car at this point… um, anyway…) because look what I came across today:

Wow, so I just have to forward my suggestion for a tweet to a committee for approval (via email) and then if approved, someone else will post it for me?

{banging head against wall}

Looks like this account may be quickly headed for the “Yeah, I have a Twitter account. I logged on once, but it was lame so I haven’t been back” crowd and while it may be too late to get some strategic planning around social media in this case, maybe we can still manage to salvage a little bit of dignity.

Here’s how I would start…

First, figure out who your Twitter personalities are going to be.

Who has the connections into the community and into the organization and can write reasonably well? Talk to those people first and find out if they have a (reasonably active) Twitter account already.

If they aren’t active on Twitter, then ping your network for Twitter gurus and hook them up with your new writers for a mini Twitternship. That’s going to be the fastest way to get the newbies up to speed.

Second, decide on some consistent content and put some tweets in the pipeline.

Even if you have experienced Twitter users writing for you, they’re still new to writing for your organization. Your org will have to develop it’s own personality over time and until then, you’ve got to start getting content out there.

Are you going to be conversational? Salesy/Advertising-focused? Are you trying to drive attendance to events or fundraisers?

Sign your account up for Tweetlater (or something similar) and start scheduling these tweets. This will be a consistent portion of your Twitter content, but should not replace your “live people” tweeting.

Finally, use TOOLS, not committees to manage activity.

Especially since this will be an organization account (versus a personal account or an @personATOrg account) with multiple people tweeting from one alias.

I understand, it’s a new tool and you don’t want people to go crazy with “teh Twitterz”, but asking for suggestions — for tweets — via email — for approval — by committee — is nuts.

Two options: CoTweet or HootSuite