Social media:
Should corporate communications teams
join in?

So how should corporate communications teams respond? “My first piece of advice is that you’ve got to be part of the debate on social media platforms,” says Richard Carpenter, managing partner of MerchantCantos. “If you’re not and a crisis occurs, your business will be talked about via social media anyway — and you won’t be there to make your views heard.”

Setting the ground rules

How do you start? “Step one is to create a robust social media usage policy,” Carpenter says. “It’s crucial to lay the ground rules — because otherwise it’s all too easy for a junior, 22-year-old employee to dictate social media policy for a corporate behemoth, simply because they happen to be the most familiar with the tools. Exactly the same was true in the early days of corporate websites,” he adds.

David Bowen, founder of web effectiveness consultancy Bowen Craggs, urges communications teams to recognise the fact that every social media platform is different — and therefore requires its own set of rules in a usage policy. “It’s best to look at social media as a series of discrete communications channels, each with its own strengths, weaknesses and challenges,” he says.

Focus on Twitter

So which social media platforms are appropriate for communicating to investors, analysts and other professional audiences?

According to Mark Stephens, digital director at MerchantCantos, the most important by far is Twitter. “Investors and journalists don’t tend to care about Facebook. But a growing number use Twitter as source material,” he explains. Bowen agrees. “Journalists use Twitter as a sort of early alert service for breaking news,” he says.

“Social bookmarks — buttons on web pages that allow users to share content via Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms — are also useful corporate communications tools. ‘Sharing’ is one of the main engines powering social media activity,” Stephens adds.

When it comes to Twitter, corporate communications teams can “join the debate” in three ways, Stephens continues:

1) The personal approach: Your CEO, or other senior executive, tweets under his or her own name, next to his or her photograph. “Few companies are comfortable with this approach, because it can be difficult to ensure that what a single person decides to say at any given time is consistent with the overarching communications strategy of an entire organisation,” says Stephens. So should you let your CEO set up a Twitter account? “If you do, you’ve got to recognise that what the chief executive writes is going to reflect on your business,” says Carpenter. “It is a corporate communications tool — even if the CEO is tweeting on a personal basis. After all, many of the CEO’s followers will be following because of his or her job title.”

2) The corporate voice: Tweet under your company’s name, using the company logo, rather than a photograph of a particular person. “This approach can work if it is done well,” says Stephens. “It’s best to use ‘we’ when tweeting company news, rather than referring to the company from a third person perspective.” He cites T-Mobile’s official UK Twitter feed as an effective example of this approach: @TMobileOfficial

3) Use Twitter just as you would use a newswire or RSS feed: pushing out company news as and when it occurs. “Most companies who use Twitter for communicating with investors, analysts and the trade press currently take this route,” says Bowen. “Shell, Roche and Nestlé all do this, for example. One advantage of using Twitter over RSS is that you can see who is following your output,” he adds.

Less is more

Whichever of these three paths you take, it’s important to keep your social media communications concise.

“Too much information obscures the message,” Stephens says. It’s also important to use Twitter and other social media platforms to link to more detailed web-based content. “Twitter is a bridging mechanism to other platforms,” says Bowen.

“Social media — especially Twitter — can come into their own as corporate communications tools during a crisis, when spreading vital information as widely as possible is key,” Stephens adds.

Listen in

As well as getting your own social media communications right, it’s equally important to keep track of what others are saying about your company via social media channels.

“Old Mutual monitors social media debate about its business on a weekly basis,” says Helen Casey, head of group marketing at the savings, investment and protection group. “It’s a brilliant tool for finding out the positive as well as negative aspects of what’s being said,” Casey says. “We’ve been able to provide our client service centres with some excellent customer feedback based on social media discussions.”

“MerchantCantos offers a full social media monitoring service to its clients,” Stephens says.

How MerchantCantos can help

MerchantCantos can develop, manage and support every aspect of your company’s social media activity — and ensure that this activity enhances, rather than undermines, your overarching communications strategy.