Things to consider when you are thinking of using Twitter for your organisation:
Commit to engagement. Draw up your service level agreement which outlines who will be looking after the account and when. Followers expectations should be managed if you can’t commit to replying to people who ask legitimate questions.
Plan any sign-off processes that you envisage. For instance, what do you do if someone tweets you with something positive. How do you respond? More importantly, how do you respond to negative coverage?
Make a plan to monitor Twitter and the social web in general so that you can respond to any coverage that you are getting which is not under your control. Develop your strategy for dealing with such coverage.
Evaluate your efforts. Before you start, work out what your goals are; awareness, media relations, resonance… From there you can plan how best to achieve them and you can measure the success of your presence after 6 months.
Don’t tweet drunk.
Barry Dewar 