MGEITF 2011: Dynamo powers Twitter session

Are we still looking for hard and fast rules when it comes to Twitter? And do they even exist? ‘The Only Way is… Twitter’ session at this years Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, fronted by Channel 4 news presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy, certainly aimed to give practical advice for how to make Twitter work for your business/channel/programme but solid advice was in short supply.

The panel were positive about the power of Twitter – a network which now has 200 million users (as of the end of March, according to the BBC). And there was no doubting the influence it can have, driven by word of mouth – or 140 characters in this case.

But it obviously works in different ways for different people. There was general agreement about rules of engagement – being interactive; talking to people, not at them; listening to feedback and so on but if you attended the session hoping for 10 sure ways to boost your business via the social network you may have been disappointed.

For the panellists – magician Dynamo and The IT crowd writer Graham Linehan – Twitter provides a platform to talk directly to their ‘fans’. They are personal, engaged and candid. And for them it works – maybe just to get their name out there, to get their personality across… But there are some obvious ‘business’ rewards. Linehan’s joke tweets about Bin Laden watching The IT crowd is pretty genius in itself!

For bigger businesses it is potentially more complex… The advice is to have one ‘voice’, which is fairly standard if you’re a one man band. And there was no shortage of Twitter usage at the festival, which shows that people definitely get it!

But achieving this in the corporate arena is still a struggle for some – it requires ownership and a clear strategy. Someone to engage with the relevant audience on a personal level but with business intention. Sounds fairly straight forward doesn’t it… But I cannot name many who seem to have nailed it, can you?

Luckily Twitter provided an opportunity for some light relief in the session. Half way through, I tweeted (as me – @lizjaques – rather than @MediaTelGroup): I know we’re here to talk about Twitter but I wish Dynamo would do a trick… and I can’t have been the only one thinking it. Guru-Murthy picked it up – correctly pronouncing my name I might add. And sure enough we got a trick – without a doubt a highlight for me. Dynamo is even more impressive face to face – the card-shuffling alone had us all mesmerised…