Further evidence of Twitter’s growing power and influence emerged this week with a flurry of announcements from well known organizations.

The U.S. military, the NFL, the U.S. Open, the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal have all issued statements that attempt to control the way their employees use social media sites, including Twitter.

Loss Of Control

There’s a growing sense among these organizations that they’re losing control of the information flow that surrounds their activities. These statements are an attempt to regain some of the control that has been lost thanks to the democratization of the web. Further evidence of this trend is provided by the 20% increase in the number of firms blocking social media sites in the workplace.

The growing number of companies that have issued social media policies that explicitly proscribe certain behavior has generated a heated debate on the use of social media by employees. For example, a recent post on the Mashable website regarding the social media policy used by Associated Press has led to a range of diverse opinions.

Blurring Of The Divide

Due to the blurring of the divide between private and professional caused by social media, this is an extremely difficult issue to address.

From the viewpoint of the company, if nothing is done, there is the potential for damage to the organization’s reputation and trade secrets. On the other hand, if their social media policy is regarded as being overly intrusive, it has the potential to create a PR disaster.

Social Media Policy

As the social media policy produced by Associated Press has been described as moderate, let’s examine what it covers.

The memo begins by stating that they don’t want to prevent the use of social media “as a personal and professional tool, but expects employees to bear in mind how their actions might reflect on the AP.”

This gives a strong indication that the underlying aim of this policy is to protect the reputation of the AP brand.

The general AP social media policy requires that “Employees must identify themselves as being from the AP if they are using the networks for work in any way.”

It continues by stating that “Posting material about the AP’s internal operations is prohibited on employees’ personal pages”. This part of the policy is perfectly understandable and most people would agree with it.

However, the first part could be seen as objectionable. Don’t AP employees have the right to network online in their own time for the sake of their professional development and future employment prospects? Isn’t that a right of all employees in all industries?

But this AP policy requires employees to identify themselves as such when they use social media for the purposes of work. And once they state that they work for AP, the policy requirements become even more onerous.

Another area that the AP policy seeks to control is the information that employees allow to be posted on their social media page. The policy reads “It’s a good idea to monitor your profile page to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards; any such material should be deleted.”

It’s one thing for AP to believe that they have the right to tell their employees what they can post on their social networking pages, but telling employees that they’re responsible for the things that other people post is a step too far.

Take Twitter for example, what does an AP employee do if someone sends them an @ reply containing content that violates AP standards?

It’s not possible to delete tweets posted by other Twitter users, so this part of the policy directly conflicts with the general aim of not preventing the use of social media.

Is AP suggesting that their employees don’t use Twitter?

By extending their policy into the realms of holding employees liable for the actions of other people, AP has shown the world that it doesn’t understand social media. And it could be argued that this does more damage to their reputation than any unsolicited comment by a faceless user of a social network.

Taking the point further, let’s assume that an AP employee has a Facebook page. On that page they mention that they work for AP. Someone else posts a message that violates AP standards.

The AP rules require that such content is removed by the employee, presumably because it could tarnish the reputation of either the employee or the company.

But compare this situation with a live networking event that an AP employee attends. A scene develops and it ends with the other person making a comment that violates the AP standards. It is overheard by most of the room (who may then subsequently spread the experience across their online social accounts).

Is AP suggesting that employees avoid live social networking events in case someone says something to them that the company doesn’t like?

In the real world, most right-thinking people will assess the comment and promptly dismiss it as having been made by a crank. Why should it be any different when the comments appear online?

The difference? Too many people still appear to hold an “it’s on the internet so it must be true” attitude. But removal suggests censorship, which suggests that they have something to hide, which lowers the reputation and integrity of both employee and company.

If AP wants to maintain the integrity of both their company and their employees, shouldn’t it also require positive, supportive posts to be removed, because equally that may not be true?

And surely it’s impossible to maintain your integrity as a journalist while being so biased when selecting which comments to allow.

One suspects that AP has conveniently overlooked this issue due to their desire to gain the enormous advantages of fast, direct communication with millions of people and all the associated promotional benefits.

Perhaps it would be better to leave all comments (which will probably be cached and available from Google before the employee has a chance to delete them), post an appropriate response and trust the rest of the internet community to apply some real-world perspective to the comments. Crank comments will be seen for what they are; lacking in any real credibility. For anything worse than a negative opinion, the existing laws of libel, slander and defamation are still available to AP.

Do you agree with the Associated Press policy on the use of social media by employees? How far do you think these policies should extend? Should employers have the right to control the way that their employees use social media? Let us know what you think below.

At present, Twitter is one of the most popular social networking sites in the world.

But will things be the same in 2 years, 5 years or 10 years?

Who knows!

Twitter might remain at the top or it may have been superseded by newer, fresher rivals.

But after the distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) last week, we reckon a few Twitter users will have considered (or worried about) what would happen if Twitter suddenly disappeared.

What would you do if Twitter suddenly disappeared or suffered from a dramatic fall in popularity?

Okay, that might be rather drastic, but nobody knows what will happen in the future and it’s best to be prepared for any unforeseen developments.

• What if spammers swamp the network?
• What if the network shifts emphasis away from the reason that you originally joined?
• What if the network starts charging users?
• What if people get bored with it and just drift away from the network?

The internet moves rapidly. Several generations of the latest, hottest sites have appeared from nowhere, grown rapidly, then peaked and been overtaken just as quickly (Geocities, LiveJournal, MySpace etc).

So here are a few important considerations to help you future-proof the time and effort you spend on Twitter.

1) Use other networks

It’s essential that you don’t tie the long-term success of your social networking to the long-term survival of Twitter. So make sure that you spread your social networking effort over a few different sites.

Ironically, given all the bird references relating to Twitter, the most important piece of advice is summed up by the well-known saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.

2) Don’t confuse the medium with the purpose

Ultimately, the most important part of your time spent on Twitter is the network of contacts that you develop with like-minded people, rather than the fact that you’ve got a well developed Twitter account.

Twitter is just the medium, your network of contacts is the purpose.

Twitter is great for meeting new people, it’s also good for quick communication as you build relationships, but over the long term your email address book or skype contacts list are more secure methods for communicating with and storing your best contacts.

So make sure that you take steps to transfer your network of contacts to at least one other communication platform. For example, you could encourage all your followers to join you on another social networking site, such as Facebook, while your closest group of contacts could be transferred to email, another instant messaging platform or even your Skype account.

Then, if anything happens to one of these platforms (either temporarily or permanently) your network of contacts won’t be destroyed. It also means that you “own” your network of contacts rather than any one networking site.

3) Strengthen your network

When you begin to build a group of contacts, your network consists of a number of relationships that are independent of each other. In a visual sense it represents the wheel of a bicycle with numerous spokes radiating out from your position at the hub.

However, the major weakness of this situation is that all of the relationships that create your network rely upon you.

• What if you lose the contact information of some of your network?
• What if you aren’t able to work for several weeks or months?

In certain cases, there is a major risk that your group of contacts will deteriorate unless you continue to maintain these relationships.

So as you develop your network, take every opportunity to strengthen your network by connecting people within your group of contacts. Bring people together who can help each other.

If these connections are successful, it will increase the goodwill that both parties feel towards you, but more importantly, it will allow your network to exist independently of you. If you lose contact with someone in your network, you’ll be able to reconnect through one of your mutual contacts.

Take action to secure the long-term future of your social network now, so that when Twitter falls off its perch you won’t suffer.

As always, use the comments below to let us know the steps you’ve taken to protect your network of contacts against the unexpected.

Business owners have discovered a wide range of ways to use Twitter for promotion purposes. For example, press releases, customer service, event updates, news updates, project updates, market research, new blog posts, special offers, recruitment etc.

They’re all good ideas and can work well if carried out in the correct manner. But they’ve been written about thousands of times across the internet.

So with that in mind, we’ve gathered together a selection of creative techniques that you can use to promote your local business using Twitter. We’ve also dreamt up a few of our own ideas, so continue reading and let us know what you think.

Here goes…

Once you build a list of local followers, Twitter is an amazing tools that you can use to let people know about;

a) Location

If you have a mobile business that moves around a local area, you will attract customers who happen to notice your presence. But what about the people who want to buy something from you but don’t know where you are at any given moment? Twitter to the rescue.

The Twitter user Waffletruck is a company that sells waffles around the streets of New York. Their tweets are used to notify their followers of their current location.

This real-time service lets people know when the Waffle truck is nearby and helps to boost the local demand for Waffles.

Likewise, the enterprising owner of an ice-cream van has used Twitter to let their followers know where they are throughout the day.

b) Vacancy

It’s also possible to use Twitter to let your followers know about the vacancy of a service that you provide.

For example, LaundryRoom uses Twitter to help the West Hall residents at Olin College’s know when the campus Laundromat has machines available. Whenever a machine becomes vacant, a tweet is used to notify the students who have followed the account.

This creative use of Twitter helps these students to find a vacant machine and helps to balance the demand for the services of the laundry room.

Likewise, it’s possible to see how this technique could be used to let local people know when other services are vacant, such as apartments to rent, parking lots etc.

c) Readiness

Another local use of Twitter is to let people know when something is ready. For example, you may have seen it mentioned elsewhere that a bakery has linked their oven to Twitter. Whenever a new batch of freshly baked produce is ready, the system automatically posts a message to Twitter to inform their followers.

This is another powerful example of providing a genuine service for customers (telling them when they can get hot, fresh baking) that will help to boost demand for your products.

It’s also possible to imagine a virtually unlimited number of ways that you could link physical sensors to your twitter account. Click here for an example involving a pot plant. These could work in both directions, either the physical sensor (for example a temperature gauge on a beach) posting a tweet to your account (to increase demand for your sun-bed hire business) or your Twitter account being used to control a physical object (someone has build a system that allows them to control their house lighting etc from anywhere in the world, by posting certain commands to their Twitter account). We’ll leave that up to you to decide how that could be used for marketing purposes.

d) Queues

All businesses have times when they’re busy and periods when they’re not so busy. Likewise, some people will do almost anything to avoid waiting in a queue. So wouldn’t it be great if you could use Twitter to inform your followers about the number of people in your store?

It may even be possible to link the electronic counter on the doors of your store to your Twitter account so that you can automatically post regular tweets (perhaps every 15 mins) to let people know how many people are in your store.

Your followers who don’t appreciate having to wait in long queues, would then be able to visit your store when you have fewer customers. This will help to balance the demand for staff attention within your store.

This technique could be used to inform your followers about the length of queue in almost any situation, for example, at the barber shop, the queues for different rides at a theme park etc.

e) Last Minute Availability

Sometimes, due to certain reasons such as cancellation, there are spaces available on flights/coaches, rooms available in hotels and spaces available in your appointment book.

Whatever business/service you operate, Twitter can be used to fill these unexpected vacancies. A simple tweet gives your followers the opportunity to book a last minute appointment/flight/vacation etc, possibly at a reduced price and it allows you to fill up space that may otherwise be wasted.

One of the major secrets about using Twitter as a marketing tool is to provide people with information that they really care about (shorter queues, vacant washing machines, fresh baking etc). People are constantly asking themselves, either consciously or subconsciously, “What’s in it for me?”

You can modify and extend these techniques to suit almost any purpose. So let these ideas set your creative juices flowing. The only limit is your imagination.

What creative techniques have you used to promote your business using Twitter? How successful were they? Share your thoughts using the comment system below.

Write for Twitter Power System

Are you a Twitter enthusiast with a flair for the written word? If so … we would like to hear from you. Twitter Power System is quickly becoming one of the premium sources for Twitter information and wants to include voices from throughout the Twitterverse. Even if you are a less experienced writer with a good idea we are willing to work with you to get your article in shape for posting.

If you have a great ideas and can’t write to save your life we would still love to hear from you.  We are not going to let you get close to a pencil, but we take one of your ideas and run with them.

How You Can Get Involved

1. Contact us using the TPS Contact Form
2. Include a one paragraph synopsis about what you would like to write about. If you have more than one idea that is okay just describe each with a paragraph.
3. Include a short paragraph about your Twitter and writing experience (if any).
4. Include your twitter ID / email / phone contact  information
5. If you have a writing sample you would like to include please do so.

Some General Rules

1. All work that is submitted must be original and have not been published elsewhere. We run all submissions through a plagiarism checker to protect against inadvertent mistakes.
2. There are a million articles on “How to Get Started on Twitter” out there. We are looking for articles of a more advanced but practical nature. Our goal is that when people finish reading your post they will say, “Wow! I didn’t know that, or That is something I can really use!”
3. Our goal is to consistently put out interesting and technically superior content. If you can’t take editorial direction don’t bother to apply. We work as a collaborative team here and getting direction is part of the process.

The Value for You…

1. You will become a published author on a very popular blog
2. You will get a back link to your own website or blog from a site that is highly ranked by Alexa
3. You will get tons of new Twitter followers
4. You will get to work with a team of true Twitter enthusiasts
5. Posting will give you great articles you can use to submit for further writing opportunities

So, get your ideas together and use the TPS Contact Form to submit them.

Much Success …

The Twitter Power Team

JamesRivers
Peter Francis
Stuart Laing