The 45th President of the United States has promoted social media, especially the Twitter platform, to a transformational communication tool—creating a generational paradigm shift in how messages are crafted and received. Love them or loathe them, Mr. Trump’s tweets move markets, influence industry, and power politics. From a strategic communication perspective, it’s absolutely fascinating to watch the analysis of the President’s Twitter usage evolve from the primaries (click here) through today (click here).
Granted, your organization’s social media engagement puts less at stake than that of the Oval Office. But there are lessons to learn from the President’s mastery of the medium—ways to harness the energy of the Twitter storm without getting blown away by it.
1. Keep all of your messaging concise. On Twitter, users live life in 140 characters. That’s it. As President Trump further popularizes the medium and gets citizens and the media accustomed to his intensely brief communication style, our attention span as a culture is bound to continue to shrink. That process was already well underway before Mr. Trump came into office. Bottom line: You must use fewer words in your messaging, across all platforms, social and traditional in order to be maximally effective.
2. Edit, edit, edit. In a world cheap valtrex to buy where messaging contains fewer words, word choice becomes exponentially more important. We’ve all seen the negative impact of real or perceived Twitter tantrums, social media missteps, and other messaging faux pas that resulted from the near-rabid rush to tweet, post, or share. Best advice: Take a breath. Read it again. Get other sets of eyes—and opinions—on your content before you put it out there. In some respects, the Internet is forever. And while time heals all (or at least most) messaging mistakes, your organization’s brand is too important to allow the expedient to be the enemy of the thoughtful.
3. Be there. Whether on Twitter or other platforms, social media engagement carries the potential for real brand reward, and the reality of inherent reputational risk. Fear of this risk causes some organizations to strangle their social media presence into irrelevancy. Don’t be one of them. In the era of the empowered social stakeholder, you must be where they are—and you must add your organization’s voice to the conversation. Do your research, craft your strategy, and keep it current. Look for ways to build brand through creative outreach, and stay true to your organization’s values. Ready. Set. Tweet.