Below is an email I sent to the company to launch 'Firetide on Twitter' internally. Please feel free to reuse; it's been adapted from an excellent reference I found online, obviously shortened from 20 pages to one (oh, those UK bureaucrats!).
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Hello All:
Firetide is now on Twitter at http://twitter.com/firetide!
Below is more info on this effort:
About Twitter
Twitter is a 'micro-blogging' platform which allows users to post short text messages (up to 140 characters in length) and converse with other users via their phones or web browsers. Unlike email or text messaging on mobile phones, these conversations take place in the open.
The platform is experiencing a phenomenal adoption curve in the US and being used increasingly by media, analysts, editors, as well as our integrator and distributor customers and technology partners. It is free to use with and has the potential to deliver many benefits for our communications and marketing objectives.
Key Objectives:
- Extend reach of our messages online (e.g. news, web updates) by building relationships with relevant audiences
- Provide leadership and credibility, increasing our visibility as the experts in 'infrastructure mesh' within the online space
- Provide an additional, low-barrier method for audiences to interact with Firetide to provide feedback, seek help and suggest ideas
- Monitor mentions on Twitter of ‘Firetide’, ‘wireless mesh’ etc., engaging with our critics and key influencers to resolve problems and correct factual inaccuracies, and with satisfied customers to thank them for their positive comments
- Provide live coverage of events (such as trade shows) for those who cannot attend
Content will comprise a mixture of Firetide communications re-purposed for Twitter, and content produced exclusively for Twitter and will consist of:
- Firetide news releases
- Firetide press coverage
- Upcoming and current Firetide events and marketing programs
- Firetide website updates - new or updated sections, new white papers, new case studies, etc.
- Videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr
- Research findings and statistics
- Relevant industry events
- Industry insights
- Educational materials
- Relevant partner news (resellers, distributors, solution partners)
Why is Twitter important?
- It’s establishing itself as the main source of live update information
- It is increasingly used by our customers and partners
- Search Engine Optimization – because it is updated frequently, Twitter content ranks highly on Google, and will give us additional exposure.
To keep our followers engaged, updates will be relatively frequent, between 1 to 3 messages per work day. During special events, updates may be more frequent.
Promotion
To promote our presence on Twitter, we’ve added a link to twitter page from “Contact Firetide” sidebar on the web site and are also promoting it through our regular communications (newsletters, webinars, etc).
Evaluation
To see how well our brand is performing on Twitter, we’ll track mentions of ‘Firetide’ and tone of these messages. We’ll track number of relevant followers, as well as followers who ‘un-follow’ us. We’ll also track click-through on the links in our messages; ‘re-tweets’ of Firetide messages, and overall performance via tools like Twitter Grader.
Please help spread the word by adding the link http://twitter.com/firetide to your signature.
