Working for Ericsson, I had enjoyed looking at Top 10 Swedish Brands on Twitter.
But then doubt attacked from all angles:
- For a global ICT company, Sweden is probably not the relevant set to compare with, rather other global ICT companies (do we need to substract the number of employees?), moreover Twitter is only one channel, if you include Chinese telco supplier Huawei, you need probably also to look at Sina
- The number of followers is obviously a rather simple, not too meaningful measurement (easily pimped, not aligned to the value created).
How do global companies present themselves on Twitter? I have observed two extremes (conceptually, the corporate realities lie somewhere in between, biased more to one or the other direction):
- The corporate voice
- The empowered choir
The corporate voice:
definition:
A single corporate account is used to distribute the corporate voice. Tweets are well aligned to and fit with overall Communication Strategy. Tone is factual.
advantages:
- Easy to implement
- Focal point
- Easily aligned with other Communication efforts
- Usually high number of followers
- Easily followed up
definition:
There are many accounts of employees with a majority of business- and work-related tweets. Opinions and tone are those of the employees, no governance model secures alignment.
advantages:
- Based on personal credibility (strong)
- Strong engagement level (employees using their specific expertise)
- Can serve as a seismic sensor system
- Can counteract negative trends
regards
gerald
I think the second model requires a higher maturity of the company towards social media. I agree with the advantages and disadvantages of both models you describe.
AntwortenLöschen@Vincent
AntwortenLöschenYou are perfectly right. Much higher maturity. I would even go so far to say, it requires a paradigm shift. Today's many companies rely on the communication guys to make all the external communication (communication expert communication); however in the empowered choir (or social tree - see other post) the communication is much more democratized, on many more shoulders: Subject expert communication. What is the responsibility of communication experts in this scenario: To train and help, to lift the maturity up to a level that this can be successful exectuted (that is a huge challenge, so although it might seem that the role of communication experts will vanish, the contrary will be the case, they need to take on a much more pronounced leadership role.
regards
gerald