I'm sure many businesses use Twitter, and other social media tools, to engage with their audience and customers. Whether it be to promote, offer support or just market, social media and Twitter are excellent for businesses. But have you ever though of using it to tweet your colleagues and employees?
There is method to this madness. Your consumers enjoy a human face and persona to be used by their brands. No one likes online robotic behaviour and so it reminds them that someone is listening and they can connect with it. Thus, using Twitter to talk and praise your colleagues and or employees allows your audience to understand that there is a network behind their favourite brand and that they are friendly, approachable and listening.
Why Tweeting Amongst Employees Works
Your Perceived Reputation
If a company is seen to be talking to its employees and happy to interact with each other, it breaks down the fourth wall between business and consumer. After all, friendly relationships between each other hint towards a friendly persona in general. It gives people the confidence to tweet out and ask for help or ask questions if they know that the representative they are talking to is friendly and open. This increases consumer engagement and thus helps your online reputation.
Office Relations and Morale
No one wants to be in an office where they feel they can't talk, communicate or be friendly with others, or worse, feel left out. Social media is a social network, use it as such. If your colleagues are on Twitter, be sure to follow them and interact. Interaction and an effort to communicate make people feel welcome, sets them at ease and makes them comfortable. Happy settled employees work better together than disgruntled and ignored ones do. A happy office environment means you get more work done to a better standard and increases office morale.
Be Proud
If one of your employees has done an outstanding job in his or her role, let people know about it! That's something we here at MarketMeSuite enjoy doing. When our tech boys make something wonderful or fix an issue, we make sure we thank them publicly and let our audience know how much we appreciate them! This boosts their morale, shows our users that we are a team that work well together and respect each others role in the company.
Don't Abuse The Concept
Although it's recommended to tweet each other and make sure you are seen to be human behind your company, be sure you do not abuse the idea. Do not tweet overly personal or unprofessional updates from your company account. Save that for your personal/free time ones. Although it is ok to use the business account for tweeting your employees, do so only occasionally and only in a professional but friendly manner. Do not scold or berate others via that account. Keeping it light, cheery and professional is the key to making this work for you and your business. You want to be human but you don'r want to unprofessional when trying to achieve this.
Key Take Away
When done correctly, a little personal tweet here and there, in the name of your company, helps your business, your reputation and your office atmosphere so makes you more relaxed, happy and understood. People appreciate a little recognition as well as your audience knowing you are friendly enough to approach. As long as you do so professional, tweeting each other really can help your business grow and expand into a trusted and loved organisation.
Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carltondrama