Tweeting too hard? How much is too much?
Posted on Thu, Jun 25, 2009
by Sully
Happy Thursday, world. Despite the unfortunate month of Junuary, summer is here – the sun is shining, the birds are chirping (dare I say, tweeting?)… and that brings me to point of this blog. Social networking is in overdrive right now, don’t you agree? Companies everywhere are realizing the importance of having online identities and now the race is on for the perfect 2.0 company case study. It’s all over the news – a Google News search on “Twitter” comes back with over 96,000 articles in the past month alone. Last week, the #140 conference dominated trending topics across the board. Are you tweeting more than your competitor? Perhaps your company is leading the proverbial pack when it comes to industry online networking. But, let’s be honest… in this hyper-connected online world, which is fueled by social networks, it can be time consuming to manage all your online identities! I guess that’s why some companies are hiring people whose sole job is to monitor Twitter. I mean, really? … I guess I wouldn’t have minded being a “Twintern” back in the day!
In fact, a lot of how businesses communicate today is a result of the younger generation’s overwhelming adoption of services and tools that hyper-connect, and sometimes even overexpose. High school students that were once obsessed with getting their prom pictures on Facebook as quickly as possible, are now finding those skills valuable as they enter the working world. Funny how things turn out. It requires the ability to quickly manage thoughts, happenings, opinions and reactions. And, business leaders are realizing that, rather than being a victim of employee blogs… or Twitter accounts… or Facebook pages… (oy!), they too can create their own identity, allowing them to control their messages, kind of. Reputation preservation aside, it gives companies the ability to participate in conversations that were once limited to customers and outside parties only. Sure, corporate opinions are always taken with a grain of salt by consumers, but at least they have the option to participate, and maybe even influence!
But, I digress… it’s hard to digest it all (check out Cathy’s previous blog on tools to help you with that, k?), and more and more articles are appearing daily, touting the importance of nurturing online visibility and reputations. Tweet as much as possible, blog three to four times a week, update that Facebook status once a day, join 10 new LinkedIn groups… got it? Good!
As evidence from our previous blogs, we believe that, at the end of the day, quality content is still regarded as most important. We could Tweet until we were blue in the face, but would you really care to read that the Metis team is eating lunch at Bostonian (for the 5th time this week)? Actually, if you are anything like us, you get supreme enjoyment from those that Tweet Too Hard.
Just food for thought on this Thursday afternoon… Gotta go! (Time to Tweet again… J) Keep on fighting the good fight.