In general, the more personal a company's Twitter account appears, the better. Traditional mediums such as corporate websites, advertisements and promotions typically lack the sort of human feeling that Twitter users crave, says Stowe Boyd (@stoweboyd), a social media analyst who writes the /message blog.
"It's not a forum to throw up press releases," he says. "They should be real people who are real representatives of companies. To remain personal, you need to be able identify the individual or individuals doing it."
While Eliason's Comcastcares Twitter page has a company logo, it also features his picture and a very humanizing trove of information, including ways to contact him directly, his personal and family blog, and other Comcast employees who operate on Twitter.
Frank Eliason runs the @comcastcares Twitter page. Analysts (and Eliason himself) credit his willingness to give the page a personal touch as helping make it a successful place to interact with customers.
If you have a page with multiple people who share the responsibility of updating it, you should devise a way to make it clear who is "on the desk." Jetblue lists this information in the bio section of its Twitter profile. Other companies' reps put initials or some form of identification at the end of a tweet.
All Twitter profiles have a field for a URL. While it might be tempting to insert your company's homepage, this might not be a good use of the space, Fitton says. Instead, you should link to a custom page on your website that explains why you're on Twitter and what you hope to accomplish by being there.
Dell provides one of the clearest examples of this method. Most of its Twitter pages link back to dell.com/twitter, where the nature and purpose of its various Twitter pages are displayed. Dell lists some of its pages as clearly promotional in nature, while others dedicate themselves to community building and discussion around Dell products.
On your company's traditional home page, you might consider creating a widget that lists your latest tweets, to send traffic from your company site to your Twitter page.
"People say businesses need to be conversational on Twitter," Fitton says. "But my overall rule is you have to provide value."
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