An interesting list caught my eye yesterday on the BrandRepublic website: Jam’s list of the top 100 most talked about brands on Twitter. Some criticism has been levelled at the research (see the comments underneath the original post), but most would surely concur that it’s virtually impossible to create a list like this that isn’t out of date within a few minutes.

What struck me was the number of brands that are being talked about, but aren’t participating in those conversations via their own Twitter handle. Microsoft does have a page, @Microsoft, though I can’t tell whether it is an official one or not, and has managed to collect over 600 followers without issuing a single tweet. Many technology companies, such as Sony and Nokia,  have accounts but have only started tweeting within the last couple of weeks. Others are prolific twitterers, but are not engaging in any dialogue with others - surely missing the point of social networking - see BBCNews; 47,000 tweets and they all appear to be automated news headlines with no attempt to engage with followers.

It seems to be that there are three major challenges:

1. Big brands are not moving fast enough to secure their brand name on various networks. Have a look at @Dell, @Nike, @Ryanair, for example. Marcomms teams need to be monitoring the emergence of new networks and ensuring they have registered their name before someone else does. Otherwise they’re difficult to find - even for someone compiling a list such as Jam’s.
2. A major stumbling block appears to be one of control, and many companies don’t want just any member of staff tweeting on behalf of the company with gay abandon. You can understand their reservations. At the recent media140 event I attended, Darren Waters from the BBC explained the difficulty of balancing the need for speed, with the need for factual accuracy that one expects from the BBC. As such, the news corporation doesn’t allow journalists to tweet as BBC employees. Unless they are Rory Cellan-Jones (who must be a trustworthy technology user) I note!
3. Finally - and I can’t speak for the brands on this list, only for the clients and prospects that I speak to on a daily basis - many of them simply don’t think it’s important. Someone I met last week was baffled by the buzz around social networking tools such as Twitter in the context of her role as marcomms manager of a global technology company selling both B2B and consumer products; yet says she always checks Amazon’s user-generated reviews before making a personal purchase. Given that tweets are now being indexed by Google, it seems unwise to ignore them and just hope your potential customers do too.

Jo Jamieson