I had an interesting conversation on Tuesday with Jonathon Markwell, one of the guys behind @TweetPower. A Twitter app developer, Jonathon was interested in my opinion on corporate use of Twitter, especially in regards to which departments should be using Twitter – sales/customer service or marketing?
I’ll warn you now, I don’t think I really came to a conclusion either way thanks to one fundamental problem. Although Twitter is an excellent tool for both departments, if neither department is talking to the other, the benefits of Twitter engagement or exposure cannot be reaped. Some companies have been progressive and made Twitter work from them; @O2UKOfficial for example manage to promote their products as well as respond to replies, questions, direct messages and flippant comments, but many companies are still trying to get their heads around blogging let alone micro-blogging.
Working for a small, niche market PR and Marcomms agency I’m in a fairly unique position. I am both marketing department and sales team. I took a fairy brave step a year ago and set up our company Twitter without permission. At first I just pushed out client press releases but as my colleagues, and more importantly superiors began to understand Twitter better I’ve been able to not only get my colleagues tweeting but also our company Twitter has evolved to be more engaging. It was initially just a PR and Marketing tool, but now I am engaging with people in our industry sector – just like a sales team.
So to wrap this all up neatly – sales and marketing departments both need to be on board with any corporate Twitter. Whoever initially manages the account really needs to be speaking to the other department to pass on leads, questions and ideas. As one of my favourite books at the moment explains, there are new rules to marketing and PR but I think you need to add sales and customer service into that list too.
Let me know what you think, do you run a corporate Twitter? Do you feed tweets through to departments other than your own? Maybe you totally disagree with me, let me know.
Posts
Why only sales or marketing? Twitter isn't (just) a sales tool. We (Press Dispensary - @pressdispensary) also see it as a fantastic way of giving our clients a level of customer support that hasn't hitherto been realistic.
ReplyDeleteRob
@robshepherd
Like Rob, we (Webjam - webjam.com) use twitter not just for marketing but also to showcase what our users are doing (we are an online social networking & publishing platform) & maintain contact & provide help.
ReplyDeleteThe twittering is the responsibility of our Community Managers, but they also get ideas/input from Marketing & IT.
Kylie
@Webjam_official
This is a fascinating question. The answer is probably not so much "who should manage it" but instead should perhaps be "is the company structured in a way that supports this brave new world?"
ReplyDeletetypically a company as it gets bigger get structured in a certain way. sales, marketing, operations, finance, IT, legal etc.
of course all these areas need to be doing the things they've always done however it must be recognised that without "marketing" their is no company/product success.
in his book "join the conversation" joseph jaffe eludes to a function called "conversation" that crosses all of the above.
Perhaps that is the answer.
Although it must always be recognised that slapping something new and shiny on top of a traditional corporate structure is probably doomed (aka seth godin and "meatball sundae")
so, no answer, I'm afraid, but lots to think about :-)