Is twitter diluting corporate brands?

I’ve just been reading a really interesting report called ‘Online PR and Social Media Trends Briefing’ from the Econsultancy, which I must say I found very interesting.

One of the striking thoughts that I was left with was that if companies are not careful, Twitter use could really upset well thought-out corporate messaging/planning.

The reason I say this is that, as a PR person, one of the messages that we try to get across to all our clients is planning and consistency. What we mean by this is that before you start any PR campaign or marketing exercise, you first sit down and work out who your audience is and what you are going to say to them, when and with what tools. Marketing 101 really.

What concerns me slightly is not the planning and messaging, as I know this is going on with our own clients, but the lack of control that Twitter accounts potentially create.

Up until Twitter came along, communication with press and consumers would have been left up to either the press trained spokesperson or carried out via the marketing tools signed off by the person managing the marketing. What you have now in some cases is all this considered process going on but jeopardised by the office junior, sales guy, call centre operative (basically anyone who has shown an interest in Twitter) running the Company Twitter account.

Whilst this is going on, who is controlling the message? Who is controlling the audience? Who is this being monitored and evaluated by? I’ve even seen international organisations that have UK and US offices running Twitter accounts which claim to be the official company brand, yet not even aware that their counterparts in another office are doing the same.

Twitter is a great communication tool and certainly here at Ranieri it is part of our day-to-day activity with press, clients and socially. But I seriously suggest that Companies start to take it much more seriously. They need to evaluate why they are using it, what are they trying to achieve, are they getting the terminology right, are they using it in conjunction with a blog, and much more.

So is Twitter diluting corporate brands? Maybe, but like any marketing tool those that think creatively will utilise it and it will take them to new heights. For those that don’t take it seriously, it will be at a best a waste of time, and at worst brand damaging. The irony is that the marketing guys in charge might not even know about it because they are not evaluating the company Twitter account!

Tags: social media, twitter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.