Some people think that social network website Twitter is all about sycophants fawning over celebrities like Stephen Fry, while the self-obsessed drone on about what they had for lunch. And, to an extent, they’re right. But to limit your understanding of this microblogging phenomenon would be missing a massive opportunity – especially if you’re a printer.

For Twitter is actually an international platform where nearly 200m users have a multitude of conversations across a massive range of topics every single day. Whatever your trade, it is likely that somewhere on the website there will be potential and existing customers, as well as a wealth of information about your market – all of which you can get access to for free. No wonder then, that a host of print companies are already on board. The problem, however, is that while the website is a potential gold mine for those who know how to use it, for those who don’t it’s a possible disaster.

For the uninitiated, Twitter (www.twitter.com) was launched in the US in 2006. It enables users to post messages, or ‘tweets’, of up to 140 characters to the website as a whole, to their followers only, or to specific people through the ‘@’ symbol. Unless a profile is set to private, you can follow anyone you like, and providing you are not set to private, anyone can follow you. This means your tweets appear on followers’ ‘news feed’ and followers’ tweets appear on your’s. It’s estimated the website’s users post 140m tweets every day.

Now it’s personal
"There are many different types of conversation happening, not just the celebrity stuff, but also business conversations across a wide range of people and industries," says Océ UK’s Business Services marketing manager Darian Simms.

Capitalising on these conversations for sales, endorsements, brand building and market and trends insight has quickly become the focus of many print companies. An added factor in getting involved has also been the kudos that comes from "doing social media", with brands hoping to seem ‘with it’ by signing up.

The latter raises a laugh from those print companies that have been on Twitter for some time. Rik Penny, director at Wiltshire printer RipeDigital, joined in 2009 in a personal, not business, capacity, having been tipped off about the website from friends in the IT industry. He says that far from being with it, many printers only succeed in showing themselves up by failing to grasp what Twitter is about – and he believes the first mistake is to choose a corporate, rather than personal, identity.  

"My account is personal," he explains. "It is me that people get to know, that people follow, that they interact with. This is where some printers are going wrong; users of Twitter want a personal connection, they don’t want faceless interaction."

Jim Cunliffe, business development manager at print broker FaceMediaGroup and another early adopter, agrees but says that this doesn’t stop you using an identity that still shows what you have to offer. While Penny uses his own name, @rik1p, Cunliffe has adopted the moniker @flyerboy_uk, which lets everyone know what he is offering without having to use the company name. He says Twitter is a lot more accepting of pseudonyms of this ilk than company names.

If this is the case, then the likes of EFI, HP, Canon, Arjowiggins, Manroland, even this very publication, and many more print companies using their brand name for their Twitter accounts are possibly showing themselves up. However, Deimante Buivyte, marketing manager at Manroland, argues that putting too much weight on the importance of a username is foolish.

"There are pros and cons to both the corporate and the personal approach," she explains. "However, the issue is less about the ‘identity’ of the account holder and more about the content and the manner of the delivery. If the Twitter account does carry a corporate identity, it will over time develop a character based on the person or people feeding the account, so personality will eventually shine through, regardless of the username."

It’s a good point: whether you can see yourself having a chat with Manroland_AG rather than rik1p probably would depend on the personality, i.e. content, of each’s Twitter feed, but here lies another issue Cunliffe and Penny have identified from the new print companies hopping on board: they just don’t understand what they should be tweeting.

"The trouble with a lot of the printers is that they use Twitter as a sales channel, just tweeting promotions constantly rather than engaging in any real way," says Penny. "If you are just pushing sales messages, they won’t follow you. ‘Social networking’ ought to be exactly that: interaction in a social way."

Cunliffe adds: "With the big companies, they are invariably paying some agency to sit there and bleat out sales rubbish – they just don’t get it. I could be in the garage on my way home at 11pm and I’ll tweet asking what colour flowers to get my wife and I’ll get responses offering an opinion. I’m engaging people, and off the back of that they will remember me. That’s how to get your brand out there on Twitter."

Social etiquette
A quick look at the feeds of some of the companies attracting Cunliffe and Penny’s ire and you can see their point – reams of sales pitches make for unattractive reading. Cunliffe believes they are playing a numbers game – stick a promotion out to 40,000 people and you’re likely to get a bite. But sporadic and untargeted sales pitches offering bland promotions is as ineffective as old style blanket DM campaigns. Manroland’s Buivyte says the problem is that the ‘social’ element of social media can be problematic for larger companies and so sales pitches are perhaps an easy option. 

"The ‘social’ in social media presents an interesting challenge for corporates – how corporate or social should a company be online?" she ponders. "There is no fixed rule for this, but you can fall back on the basic principles of marketing – the right content via the right channel for the right audience."

Manroland makes a decent effort at moving away from a purely sales approach, but still occasionally comes across too sales centred. Similarly, while the main Océ feed struggles to stay away from preaching, its outsourcing feed is making some interesting headway. The latter has been driven by Simms’ desire to make his company realise that it can understand markets better by using Twitter, rather than just seeing it as a sales mouthpiece.

 "Instead of pushing sales messages, we are starting to look at Twitter as a medium to understand our markets by contributing to and listening to conversations that are happening," he explains. "Contributing is really important, Twitter is an invaluable source of information, but you can’t just sit back and listen without giving something worthwhile back."

If you’re not careful, however, giving something back can do more harm than good. Throwaway comments on Twitter can quickly turn into substantial, and newsworthy, issues. The most high profile example recently was a joke by Twitter user Paul Chambers who, in frustration at the potential closure of Nottingham airport during heavy snow, joked he would "blow the airport sky high". He was convicted of "menace", fined £1,000 and was sacked from his job. If this comment was made on a feed connected to a business, that business would be seriously tarnished.

For the corporate accounts, where tweets go through several people before being published, it is easier to ensure content errors don’t occur, but for those tweeting in a personal capacity, an off-the-cuff comment can be more likely and users can forget they are still representing their employer.

Penny says he realises the dangers, but adds that he would be careful about everything he said on Twitter even if it wasn’t connected to his company, as it is, after all, a public forum. Jason Boxall, owner of Pro-Active Business Information, says some printers aren’t so sensible.

"Unless tweets are very strictly controlled, it can place the organisation in a bad light," he explains. "I remember a well-known print and direct mail company in London (since stopped trading) that had a Twitter feed and unfortunately, the garbage that was written on the feed was such that it portrayed the business in a very, very negative way."
This shouldn’t deter companies from tweeting at all though, as not saying anything is a massive Twitter faux pas.

Following hundreds of people to gain market insights while offering nothing in return suggests the company is exploiting its customers.

Thankfully, this is something  print companies seem to have recognised already. Angela De Vorchik, operational marketing manager at Arjowiggins Graphic, explains how the paper company uses Twitter to talk to customers and respond to queries from potential clients, while addressing any concerns raised on by users of the website. Meanwhile, Manroland’s Buivyte states: "If you wish to engage with customers, make sure you commit the time to it and engage – Twitter is two-way communication, not just a information dissemination channel."

It’s about time
Buivyte makes a crucial point: time is what Twitter requires most of all. To get the benefits of it, to ensure regular, added-value tweets that are considered enough not to do more damage than good, to truly target the people who follow you and those you follow in return – it all means a lot of effort. In the present market, while the big boys like Océ talk of employing someone specifically to handle the Twitter feeds, the average printer on the street is likely to be too busy to do things properly unless, like Penny and Cunliffe, they have a real passion for it.

This is certainly something Kristina Wood, director at Print4Sheffield has found. "We do have a Twitter account but unfortunately I don’t update it as much as is probably needed," she concedes. "You have to put the effort in to get any benefits out, but you have to make the time to do that and finding that time can be difficult."

Fortunately for those in the same situation as Wood, along with those printers yet to sign up to the website or those not quite understanding it, Twitter is not yet a must-have part of a company’s DNA. However, as the next generation of consumers comes to dominance – a group that inhabits an online sphere in preference to an offline one – this is likely to change. A Twitter presence, as well as the utilisation of other social media tools, is likely to be ever more crucial in the sales mix and those who haven’t learned the lessons now may find they pay in the future for not utlitising the training time they are being afforded in the present.

PRINT ON TWITTER
Below is a selection of print-related Twitter users to get you started if you wish to sign up to the website (www.twitter.com)

Company	Username	Tweets	Followers	Following
Arjowiggins	@Arjowiggins	347	640	374
EFI	@EFI_Print_Tech	496	2,437	928
FaceMediaGroup	@flyerboy_uk	4,413	5,961	5,116
HP	@HPprint	1,932	37,954	3,005
Manroland	@manroland_AG	285	371	71
Océ	@oce	283	1,857	115
PrintWeek	@printweek	2,867	2,938	210
Print4Sheffield	@Print4Sheffield	10	18	50
RipeDigital	@rik1p	5,044	1,100	323
Xeikon	@xeikon	309	383	226

Information from Tuesday 3 May

TOP 10 TWITTER TIPS
1 Think carefully about your username, it is the equivalent of your shop window so will form people’s initial impressions of your company

2 Be brief and accurate with your ‘About Me’ section, as the web user has a restless mind that likes short and sharp information

3 Run searches for relevant people to follow – don’t confine yourself to just typing in print, look for other areas such as design as well

4 Be selective about the feeds you want to read ensuring it will be useful to you – following too many unrelated people can see the useful info get lost in the melee

5 Engage in conversations with people using the @ symbol, demonstrating that you are using the website in an active way

6 Do not just tweet promotions

7 Link to interesting websites and videos as it is a good way of sparking conversations and getting retweets (where your tweet is shared on a follower’s feed)

8 Ask questions and generate debate, as this gets people talking to you and you to them

9 Tweet regularly – five times a day is a minimum for many users

10 Enjoy it – act too stuffy or begrudging and you’re wasting your time, really embrace the medium and join the connection it provides