To Tweet or not to Tweet

Andrew Campbell learned a hard lesson when he decided to start his #Farm365 hashtag, in which he would post a daily photo in the hopes of showing what life was like on a farm. It was quickly hacked by vegans around the world to promote their message of animal cruelty.

Twitter can be a powerful place to mobilize people of like minds but it can be just as powerful a place to hijack a seemingly noble cause.  Perhaps Mr. Campbell should have chosen a different social media platform to promote his ideas, such as Facebook. If he used Facebook, he could have controlled what was posted and deleted those posts he felt were not appropriate. As it stands, he has a lot of damage control to contend with and only limited space to do it in.

With just 140 characters to engage with an audience, organizations need to be careful when designing their Twitter objectives. Too many posts and it can irritate your followers; too few posts and they might as well abandon the platform. For example, my son’s school has a Twitter account, but they should not have one. When I have tweeted to them, they have taken days to respond, and when I expect them to tweet about school closures due to weather there is no tweet to be had. They need to delete their Twitter account because they do not use it properly.

The same goes with hashtags. When an individual overuses hashtags to #describetheirday to #complain, #compliment, or send #happybirthdaywishes to their #friends, it gets #annoying but I put up with it because maybe they just do not understand Twitter etiquette. However, if an organization #doesthesamething, it is infuriating and shows they lack the skills to use social media properly. I would quickly unfollow an organization that did not use suitable hashtags. Getting the right hashtag is key to any successful Twitter strategy.

Organizations and individuals use social media to stay connected and informed. Organizations need to pick which social media platforms are best suited for their messages and which will engage their target audience. For us individuals, we also need to be wary of what messages we are sending through social media. What we write stays forever in the digital world and controlling what is initially posted is far better than trying to control it after someone has misinterpreted it, or worse, hi-jacked your well-intentioned message.