To tweet for a company

On 5 March 2009, I started twittering for Piratförlaget via twitter account @ piratforlaget .

We wanted to find a way to communicate with readers and others in an open and direct manner. I myself had had much contact with the forum users on skrivarsajten Chapter 1 (which Piratförlaget partner) and noticed that there was great curiosity about what is happening in the publisher's walls. Knowledge that could easily be passed - and which also strengthened the awareness of the publisher.

The communication we thought we would be both a simple type of frågelåda / customer service and a way for us to create PR around the books we publish. We had been thinking about a part in creating a Facebook page, but knew right then that it was a little too silent communication.

After the Swedish Bookstore editor Lasse Winkler had written a trip report from a conference in New York, where he talked about how the American publishing industry began to have great use of Twitter, so I looked more closely at this form of communication.

I'll be honest and say I had very little track of Twitter a year ago. I had read about micro-blogs and realized that what they wrote in their messages would be said in 140 characters. But you could get much sense said I was not entirely convinced.

And just as honestly, I will say that the strategy around our twittering was not very clear at first, but rather was based on testing and see where it led.

We decided at least to try out Twitter. There was originally an idea that several of the publisher could tweet by piratforlaget account, but it was never. For safety's sake I registered but also a more personal account, @ mattiasb .

The first twittering

My first month's messages (tweets) was mostly on one-way communication. It was a PR creation info and links and not much else. Some shorter conversations, mostly in connection with that I found on the small races and lottery books. Part of the PR tweetsen sent on (what is called the retweet - RT or as abbreviated) of tweets that came piratforlaget account. But it was still a relatively small number who were followerskaran, around a hundred people for a month. In early June, it had grown to 300. The magic thousand mark was passed just before Christmas 2009th In the current situation, I have about 1200 followers, which I'm insanely happy with and in no way proves it hopefully I'm not totally wrong out there with my twittering.

Followersiffror it must be take with a grain of salt. Some of those who started following piratforlaget account may not be very active on Twitter anymore. And many other misunderstood my tweets in the flow of messages from hundreds of others tweeted that they follow. While it is obviously good with lots of followers - always the one who sees what I write.

A little more personal

During the summer of 2009 I started learning more and more how to tweet in order to have a greater impact. Simply send out promotional creative tweets and links to reviews etc gave twittering a very corporate feel. Admittedly, I was more personal in those cases when it passed to the conversations between me and the specific tweet, but I kept mostly to substances that could be linked to Piratförlaget or book market in general.

Slowly but surely, I tried to write a bit more personal tweets. Nothing really had with my personal life to do, but my tweets began more and more marked by my interests, my taste and not least my sense of humor. The whole time at a level where the specified sender (Piratförlaget) could account for the message if it were taken out of context. So far, I think my only tweet that has been taken out of context and published elsewhere is a little humorous commentary on language newspaper twitter account which they then pressed in number thereafter.

For those who are new follower of mine, it might seem confusing that a company sends out personal tweets, but anyone who followed me for a while can probably easily tell when I write business-related things and when I tweet more personal. To further emphasize that it is a mixture of business and personal I changed in the summer of the name of the account from Piratförlaget to pirate publisher mattias. The address @ piratforlaget I had, however, remain unchanged.

An unexpected discovery

That my tweets were more personal was largely the result of that I started in different ways to get to know many of those who followed me and that I followed.

I follow about half of those who follow me. I do not follow all depends practical for me then would not have a chance to have time to see some individual messages in a constantly updating stream of tweets of others. And I'm really interested in what others write. Often it gives me ideas for your own tweets - not to mention how it gives me the knowledge and develop me as a person.

Now that I mixed up more and more humor and non-publishing-related topics in my twittering, I noticed suddenly that I was much more retweets. Both by those who have been a little closer twitter friends, and of others that I had not had any contact with twitter. When I went from being a company to be a person so I was seen as a more serious tweeted. My babbling about irrelevant things made me look like someone you could be friends with, have some fun with twitter. While I tried to do my PR creative tweets a little more personal so that they might rather be seen as hints than pure PR.

I try of course never cheat anyone. Of course, I would still be twittering will create goodwill for the publisher that my followers will pay attention to the books and authors I tweet about and to my followers in turn will spread the message of these books and authors on. But with that I blend in so much of myself into twittering so it will still not that corporate-feeling on the whole.

A large experimental

My way of företagstwittra definitely not fit all companies. I have worked for Piratförlaget for quite some time (nine years) and know exactly where the limits are. I have a boss who would let me be Piratförlaget voice on Twitter. And this can be a big transition for many companies, it is not always the lead or example, the Communications Department who is the person who will be the company's voice on Twitter or other social media. But it requires of course that the person has an instinctive feel for what can be said of the company name. Example to mix in humor is an effective means of social media, but the humor must be right if you are företagstwittrare. Never personal attacks. Never anything serious. Instead, quite innocent humor. In my case some ordvits spirit. Then it is possible that I småretar or fooling around with twitter acquaintances who I know well, at a level that is still okay to Twitter and most closely resembles a friendly intercourse.

In this way, my twittering a great experiment to see how far one can go in to mix business and personal. As Twitter basically is about to engage in dialogue with others, so there is no point to use it as a megaphone, but much more important to be personal and not least human. I want to show that Piratförlaget is not just a business, but actually consists of people - and that there are people who do not mind to have a dialogue with readers. For without the readers, we are of course nothing.

I tweet at all possible times of the day, I write as much about television programs and Sherlock Holmes as I write about the book market, e-books or Piratförlaget publishing. I do not recommend any other companies that outright tweet in this way - instead you should design their twittering in a way that suits one's own business.

Different ways to reach out to many

I mentioned earlier that one should not stare yourself blind on the number of followers you have. Much more important is to weigh out how much two-way communication twittering result, the number of tweets that are retweets and what to simply get the rumor on Twitter and thus also on the web in general. You handle these things right, the number of followers to increase in a natural way.

Something you should refrain altogether is to follow others if one's sole purpose is to get them to follow one back. There are some spamming foreign companies that are doing this and it is considered extremely frivolous. If a company starts to follow someone, you do it either because they are interested in what they write or to one's policy is to follow back all of their followers.

Below are some of my way to reach out to many in the best possible way:

• Try to have such a personal tone as possible on the 140 characters (but without involving my private life and never give out any other private individual)
• Almost always respond to messages sent to me
• Retweet good and fun information from other tweets - a lot of Twitter is to disseminate information on - and that is appreciated both by those who will retweet and hopefully of my followers
• That when I write originaltweets (ie the tweets that go out to all my followers) always try to make them so interesting or fun that they are worthy of retweets. For this reason, I write almost never originaltweets that are longer than 120 characters - precisely calculated so that others can retweet my tweet without having to edit it.
• To tweet now and then even outside office hours - especially when it comes to answering simple questions or comment on any day up to date as regards one's trade or business. I tweet myself very much out of hours - and in the evening I tend to not be as strictly business related to what I write about.
• To not only keep track of tweets directed to one's twitter address but also to have intelligence on Twitter. This is easily done via eg search on the company name on search.twitter.com (make sure that the language restriction is set to Any Language or Swedish) or better still through a search in one of the twitter apps, such as TweetDeck. This just shows what is written on one's company and have the opportunity, always very friendly, comment or answer questions. But to do it in moderation, people should never feel watched, but it will happen when well-chosen occasions, purely from a service perspective.
• Something that is appreciated and not too tricky to implement is to organize small competitions or prize draws of (preferably) company linked prices. Some companies require the contestants to retweet tävlingstweeten to get to compete - and thus spread the company's twitter address and any link to the company site. I myself have not done that way, I thought it felt like just above my personal spam threshold. I do not think retweets should be used that way as well, I do not have a Twitter who spammed apart by companies forced tweets.
• A more diffuse way is to participate in various twitter collaborations and happy to be the initiator of them. In my case, I was in and laid the foundation for the hashtag # books and # book fair (ie, the Book Fair) - no peculiarities of course, but it shows that Piratförlaget want to be a twitter factor to be reckoned with in the book industry, while it has given me a lot some good contacts. I was also one of the organizers of a ' tweetup (twittrarträff) in Stockholm last autumn. And I helped created Twitter # rimstuga for Christmas 2009 and uppetwittrarkvällen # uppetwit December 23, 2009. Phenomena that spread in Swedish Twitter and where I through personal activity got new twitter contacts.

The best thing about Twitter

Företagstwittrande can be done in a variety of ways and benefits will thereafter. You can use Twitter as a pure customer service or you can make it more or less personal. One can divide the twittering of a number of accounts for various departments within the company or limit themselves to one who can represent the entire company. And you can be a lonely tweet for the company or be several people share a single Twitter account. If you do the latter, it is often (if you do not have the account just as Customer) good to end the tweet with their initials or the like, so that your followers can distinguish between those who speak the other end.

When företagstwittrar the way I do you can divide the benefits of Twitter in two categories: that which is good for me personally and what is good for the company. These categories are of course often into one another, but here are some examples. First, what concerns me personally:

• By following more than 500 other tweets and have a regular communication with many of them I have in the past six months to quickly build up a really good network of contacts, mainly in the social media world, as most I have chosen to follow is there.
• Twitter has become my spine in social media, where I always pair it with my activity in blogs and other nätsammanhang and where I post network with many of my twitter friends also on Facebook.
• Through my twittering, I have a whole bunch of new friends, which I probably never would have met otherwise. Often, it is completely unexpected meetings, where we have very different values ​​on different issues, but Twitter connects us to the idea that the conversation regarding these issues is what will develop us.
• I am constantly updated with the knowledge I need in my nätstrategiska work and I do not know, I get fast response when I ask my followers.

For Piratförlaget part is of course goodwill and PR for individual books and authors a tremendous advantage with Twitter. But there are other good reasons to företagstwittra:

• In those cases, I tweet a link to such a news article on our site or any of the authors' blogs to get the instant a traffic-generating power. And it is an exciting novelty, it will probably be retweets on.
• Although I do not reach as large a part of the Swedish population via my twittering, it's a very interesting part of the population. Many of the network's top opinion leaders (many journalists and popular blogger) is on Twitter and if they start to follow me, or otherwise take part of what I tweet about, I can get across my message to far many more if these opinion leaders choose to take raise issues of concern to my company. Moreover, they know that I am only one tweet away in case they need to know something concerning Piratförlaget or other bokbranschrelaterat. And I've gotten used to them that I am quick to respond.

The future

Twittering takes a lot of time for me, sometimes up two hours per day effective period (spread out over both work and leisure). It is not certain that I forever have to spend so much time twittering. And in the current situation is Piratförlaget twittering entirely linked to me. So företagstwittra the way I do is perhaps a risk in terms of continuity. It's me personally that drives this experiment to make företagstwittrandet so incredibly personal. On the other hand, it is perhaps the case that companies must consider their work with social media and especially Twitter - but it takes someone who is very involved in her twittering.

While I can not see a future without Twitter for me. It is, as I mentioned earlier, the backbone of my online activities and a constant source of further development.

Twitter will never become popular in the same way that Facebook has become. The threshold is too high and it takes over Facebook a little longer to find the benefits and joy of it. But those who actually getting into twittering seriously often become very involved in it and can not be without it. Especially since the benefits and joy of these people far exceeds what they can get out of Facebook or via other nätvägar. In this way, Twitter as a linking factor between people, companies and organizations - we know that through our twittering share a kind of basic approach to social media and for the simple reason we like each other a little extra, whether we really have with each other to do. The climate on Twitter is similar to other sites on the Internet - friendship more communication is hard to find. All this makes me want to be in the Swedish Twitter World and it is also the reason why I will continue to ensure that Piratförlaget is a natural part of the same and in addition a popular company in social media.

Also, look at the section of JMW Talk show where I talk about my företagstwittrande.

On 5 March 2009, I started twittering for Piratförlaget via twitter account @ piratforlaget. We wanted to find a way to communicate with readers and others in an open and direct manner. I myself had had much contact with the forum users on skrivarsajten Chapter 1 (which Piratförlaget partner) and noticed that there was great curiosity about what is happening in the publisher's walls. Knowledge that could easily be passed - and which also strengthened the awareness of the publisher. The communication we thought we would be both a simple type of frågelåda / customer service and a way for us to create PR around the books we publish. We had been thinking about a part in creating a Facebook page, but knew right then that it was a little too silent communication. After the Swedish Bookstore editor Lasse Winkler had written a trip report from a conference in New York, where he talked about how the American publishing industry began to have great use of Twitter, so I looked

Tagged as: Facebook , followers , JMW , JMW Talk show , Chapter 1 , Lasse Winkler , Piratförlaget , TweetDeck , tweetup