A while ago I was talking to a friend who was working for a popular satellite navigation company. Twitter, Facebook and all of those networks were very new and exciting. I was writing a book about them and she asked me what to do about employees with personal Twitter feeds.

This struck me as a bit odd. Many employees would be on Twitter in person, I assumed. Some of them would have their own phone, too, apart from the work one, also running water and in some areas the right to vote.

We established quite quickly and directly that I had no need to be so bleeding sarkey. Her problem was a real one. Loads of excited product developers were Tweeting away and telling everyone the next version of the range, due in February, would blow the rest away. It was brilliant and everyone would want it.

The problem was that this was in August. So the message was going out, however unintentionally, that people shouldn’t bother buying the current range (a fatal thing to tell people in the run-up to Christmas) – they should wait until the New Year.

Personal stuff

Her issue was twofold. First she wanted neither to stamp on genuine enthusiasm – as the internal PR this was a mighty asset and she knew it – nor to appear control freakish. Second, though, she needed to be in control of communications going outside the company. So, how to achieve this when people were using their own personal networks?

The answer in this instance was actually fairly simple but slightly clouded by the presence of “social networking” – as if this introduced some sort of new rules.  Every company contract issued to every employee already had clauses about keeping company confidentiality, the management simply had to remind people that going onto Twitter was a bit like going into the pub, except you’d be talking to thousands rather than tens of people.

Breaches of confidence are one thing. There are other areas, though, in which social media throws out issues that need to be dealt with.

Finding your voice

Every writer, columnist, speaker, is advised by mentors and peers to find their voice. This isn’t in the literal sense of finding out how to speak, we can all do that, obviously. But finding the distinct “voice” – the tone that means it’s your company and no other speaking. Many companies prefer to be “corporate” rather than personal in their approach as they’re businesses rather than individuals, but you can end up with some very dry interactions.

We’ve all seen them on Twitter and Facebook – the ones that never reply, whose posts are so bland they might as well have been written by an automaton. They’re not great. Here are three examples of companies which have overcome that.

The electronics company

I’m not going to tell you which company I’m talking about here. I’ll keep you guessing. But there’s one major electronics company out there which has a fictional person answering its Tweets and Facebook interactions. Of course it’s a real person responding but if you wrote to them about something then one day you might find your response was from Frank, another time Gillian – except you wouldn’t know, because they all sign themselves as Pete (names changed to protect the faintly aimless).

The idea is not to bother the end customer with any internal changearounds. Whatever happens to the real people, the internal response will always appear to be from Pete. Would this suit your business?

ITV

Or would you rather declare up front when a valued colleague is moving on?

ITV, the television company, used to have a couple of people running its Twitter stream. One of them was called Gary. You always knew when it was him, because he’d start off his Tweets “Gary here”. His colleague Andrew would introduce himself as Andy, and…you get the idea.

When Gary left, Andy simply told everyone – and wished him every success, in public. The decision ITV had made, presumably, was that its social media contacts should be encouraged to interact with and build a rapport with real people. And if that means engaging them all over again when someone else takes over the job, so be it. It appears to have worked as the viewers are fine with it. Maybe that’s right for your company?

Anonymous

The other way to handle the issue is to go completely anonymous – but you still need a voice. Innocent Drinks is the past master at this. The corporate image isn’t to everybody’s taste; some people find it a little twee and knowing (check the labels on one of its smoothies, there will be jokes, all sorts of stuff).

What nobody would dispute is that it’s utterly distinctive. It might be any member of staff putting the Twitter notes or Facebook comments up but it “feels” like the same very distinctive company, like the tone or loath it.

Your business

BizGene can’t advise on which of these approaches is the best fit for your business – by definition we don’t know your company so that would be impossible.

There are a few rules, though, whichever approach you take:

• Engage rather than make a series of announceents
• Listen as well as talk
• Make sure whoever is in charge of your social media can do something useful with the feedback – there is nothing worse than talking to a company on Twitter and realising the person on the receiving end can’t help with your issue!

Guy Clapperton