Brands on Twitter

Why Brands ABSOLUTELY DO Belong on Twitter

Lon S. Cohen is a writer and social media strategist. He is @obilon on Twitter.

A Mashable article by Dr. Mark Drapeau was passed around on Twitter this Friday, calling for a ban on brands on Twitter. Cohen respectfully disagrees and explains why in his recent post at Mashable

He writes that:
1. Twitter is Opt-In
2. Twitter is the New Phone Company
3. Brands Can Have Personalities Too

The post includes Cohen's Twitter Tips for Brands in 140 Characters and his Creative Ideas for Brands on Twitter.

Twitter can well be used for different purposes: think of a restaurant pushing it's daily menu out, a retail store pushing out daily sales or promo's — if you're interested it's not spam! — carsellers listing newly brought in cars, maybe even schools pushing out to parents the kids that didn't show, ... and these are just my on the fly thoughts on new apps of the Twitter platform.

Some brands really get it, if thought of well there is a great opportunity to interact with consumers and get an interesting dialog started... those are the ones that should be on Twitter. They make a great product and they understand the importance of engaging their consumers. Companies like Comcast, Zappos, Starbucks, and Mimoco interact with their consumers every day, and for that deserve some sort of recognition.

There are brands that use Twitter to spam. These accounts are only on Twitter to let people know about new deals, new products, or anything else about their product. When they follow way more people than are following them than they obviously don’t get it. A brand should NOT follow anybody (unless they want to listen) if they just want to push promo's out, if it is well thought of and checked, and especially if it's interesting to consumers they'll start to follow!

Report Twitter spam by sending @spam a tweet with the suspicious user name: "@spam @spam123"