Microblogging - what is your company doing?

One of the trends these days is getting into an online active dialogue with stakeholders. The corporate communication professional has several online tools at hand. The most important tool is the corporate website, but E-mail, RSS, podcasts and corporate blogs are frequently used as well. A relatively new addition to this toolbox is microblogging. What is it and should companies consider using microblogging services?

The Online Corporate Communications Toolbox

What is Microblogging?

Users of microblogging services such as Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku and Tumblr can follow each other so they know what each is doing by sending out short 140-character messages (or Tweets) through SMS, E-mail, Instant Messaging or (mobile) websites.

Microblogging is versatile; you can keep in touch through various channels of communication between multiple individuals.  In this article there will mostly be referred to Twitter as the main microblogging service. With over 685.045 users (TwitDir.com) this is by far the most popular one. Twitter asks its users to answer the question: What are you doing?

 
Twitter is the most popular microblogging service according to Google Trends

Microblogging for online corporate communications – some ideas:

Twitter as…

• an alert service to communicate press releases (what is the company doing?)
• a way to communicate opening and closing stock price (what is the stock price doing?)
• a service to communicate product / service updates and news to customers (what is the product / service doing?)
• an internal tool to share knowledge (what do your colleagues know?)
• a recruitment tool to distribute vacancies (what vacancies are available?)
• a new and real-time way to present testimonials ‘a day in the life of an employee’ (what is an employee at company x doing?)
• a way to communicate corporate weblog updates (what are the corporate bloggers doing?)

Press – alert service press releases

Microblogging could be used as a notification system or presence updater as Derek Abdinor described in his article on Enterprise Microblogging. Why not using microblogging as an RSS feed either internal or externally.  In addition, the public relations departments could update their companies’ followers on the latest press releases and news items.

Internal communications – Share knowledge

Imagine, your communication department using Twitter as an internal communication tool. The manager ‘tweets’ to his colleagues about an interesting article, to ask feedback or share knowledge. For example, your head of communications is working on a project and looking for interesting articles on Enterprise 2.0: by sending out a Tweet to the communications team, he or she would quickly receive some URLs directing to interesting articles or reports.

Online Recruitment – Distributing vacancies

Twitter could be a channel to distribute your vacancies. A Dutch example is www.twitter.com/werkstudent (in Dutch). It distributes vacancies via Twitter and also provides some tips on how to improve your CV.  Job fairs on Second Life already took place, why not organise a job fair on Twitter? The advantage here is the possibility to attract people that don’t visit your website regularly and provide them with relevant facts.
 

Werkstudent.nl communicates vacancies and tips to improve jobseekers’ resume

Product / Service news and updates

The Dutch Railways company (Nederlandse Spoorwegen) has a Twitter account to communicate actual disturbances and delays.

The Dutch Railways Twitter account to inform followers about the latest disturbances

Do’s

• Start to experiment with Twitter on a small scale, for example by distributing press releases and/or vacancies
• Provide a hyperlink in the Tweet to the location (e.g. on website) where ‘more information’ on the topic can be found.
• Assess whether your target groups are ready to use microblogging services, such as Twitter
• First start with E-mail and RSS alerts / notifications before using microblogging services, such as Twitter

Don’ts

• Use Twitter as the sole channel to communicate sensitive (financial) information
• Over invest time and money (wait until the breakthrough)

With Twitter organisations can optimize internal communications. As soon as Twitter breaks through in your target group, it can be applied to online recruitment, press, branding and service purposes.