Issues: Promotion, Customer Service, PR, internal/external communications; product launches; momentum vs. customization
The types of content you send via social media depends, of course, on your audience. B2B, employee-centric, information vs. advertisement.
So, how do you decide what to do with your Twitter account when your audience varies? Large companies have to deal with this, of course, but so do many small ones. Most companies will have content that is extremely applicable to one segment of an audience, but completely useless to another segment. As we know, content is king, and useless content normally means exile.
This fragmented relevance narrows your audience, and the reason can be manifold, from geography-specific content (i.e. in-store promotions, discounts or special events) to promoting large campaigns or initiatives content (new book launch with dates and updates, new product line that needs the publicity).
To an extent, geography can be taken care of with targeted posts on Facebook (free) and Twitter ($), although it's worth pointing out that most companies opt for multiple accounts instead of geo-targeting from one account.*
Pros for multiple accounts:
1. More relevant content to a more specific audience (hopefully higher engagement)
2. You can always cross-promote with a RT for big announcements
3. More flexibility
4. Customer service
A quick word on the customer service potential. It's nice to see that a company is paying attention to customers via Twitter (particularly because followers expect it), and it may be fine for smaller firms. For large companies though, Twitter can become the Customer Service hotline, and it may be necessary to have a Twitter account designated for that purpose.
Cons for multiple accounts:
1a. It will seem like you have fewer followers for the main and subsequent accounts.**
1b. Momentum will be more difficult with tweets and retweets
2. More monitoring is required, particularly if different departments are in charge.
3. Depending on how much content you produce, it could be difficult to maintain the account and establish a reliable cadence.
If your company were deciding this, what would you suggest? Does it even matter?
*take a look at movie theaters. Plenty have indiv. accounts for each cineplex.
**The # of followers isn't everything, I know, but it's not irrelevant.
What about Target? They have several accounts including one specifically for deals. Personally, I question why @targetdeals needs to be a separate account.
ReplyDeleteI agree. You'd think discounts would be pretty standard Twitter fodder for retailers. However, that might be exactly why Target does it. They are setting very specific expectations of what they'll tweet and what they won't tweet. Maybe they don't want to appear over-selly on the main feed.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that just came to mind: it's a much lower commitment to follow, say, 5 Target accounts on Twitter than 5 Facebook pages. They show up in your feed the same way, and you choose what kind of messages you're going to get. They're kind of following an email marketing strategy of customers choosing which mailing lists to be on. Again, I'm torn.
A company I'm familiar with has a book launch promotion coming up, and the decision has been made to make a separate Twitter account for this book, as well as for the magazine. We'll see what that's going to look like through the whole process.