Jon Pincus started up another brewhaha over the question on his blog and on Progressive Exchange by stating that “Yes, Twitter is a strategy”. The context was a discussion about the Moldova political situation.
He made recommendations “for a Twitter-based strategy, assuming there’s a little bit of lead time.
- getting people to sign up for Twitter in advance
- including Twitter in training sessions (and perhaps classes at schools and universities)
- having simple printed and online instructions in several languages to help people sign up with Twitter
- establishing a hashtag
- establishing a trustable shared account for important announcements, which is important for situations where the hashtag is overloaded and/or troll-infested
- encouraging bloggers to install “tweet this” buttons on their blogs, and providing instructions to make it easier
- publicize proxies and Tor, and give instructions on how to use them for when the government shuts off access to Twitter
- tipping off friendly media that there’s a story in progress about how you’re using Twitter
- getting volunteers, ideally in international locations, to translate important tweets
- deploying technology to deal with trolling and disinformation (something tcot, tweetleft, and Twitter Vote Report have all done)”
I think it’s a terrific list and told him so. I can see evolving it for disaster response & relief coordination, too.
But to get back to the main question, my response was:
“Sorry to let myself get suckered into a semantic argument, but I feel it’s important since so many people misuse these terms and having discussions around them always require definition.
For the greatest clarity, I would phrase as follows:
Twitter is a *tool*.
The Twitter tasks you list are *tactics*.
Your *Twitter strategy* is the thoughtful definition of, goals for, and execution of, that collection of tactics as a part of your larger overall strategy.”
Opinions vary, and I’m happy to hear yours, so please feel free to comment.
One Comment
Thanks for the link, Nicole! Agreed: the semantics matter.
Twitter’s a tool, and it’s also a lot more, including a communication channel, a place, an emerging language, a company, a platform, and a community. Sometimes it’s the right thing to focusing primarily on one aspect; other times, the multi-faceted view matters — the tactics I suggested are based in almost all of these.
And yes, the tactics I described do add up to a “Twitter strategy”. What I’m also saying, though, is that in this case Twitter also makes sense as an overall strategy towards these particular goals. Of course, just as with the other strategies I described (first to market, fast follower, shock and awe, etc.), this isn’t the only thing going on; and organizations typically pursue multiple intersecting strategies simultaneously.
Still, using the defintion of strategy as “a plan of action to achieve a goal”, I think Twitter meets the bar. Consider this hypothetical conversation:
“We need a plan to get media attention and connect with our international supporters. What do you suggest?”
“Twitter!”
“Oh really? How would that work?”
At which point the details follow …
jon
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