Chamber Twitter Directory

Sharing a twitter account is NOT suggested, but it could technically be done with your most trusted staff at the Chamber.  The benefit is simply that people are able to follow one Chamber twitter account, but it's being populated with diverse information coming in from various staff members. 

Every person you entrust with this communication responsibility needs to know that "this" twitter account is strictly for business and not to be used for personal messaging or following others.  Stressing that it is purely for broadcasting important Chamber and community information is critical under a shared account. 

If they have the keys to the building... just maybe they can be trusted with the keys to twitter too? 

When you share a twitter account and a staff person leaves the Chamber, you would always want to change the password to the account.  This will assure that only current staff can post to twitter.

Check list for sharing a twitter account:

1. Write a policy for staff who will have access to twitter on behalf of the Chamber.
2. Include a paragraph about the topics they are allowed to report on for the Chamber.
3. Consider setting up your staff as though they are reporters for the community and Chamber.
4. You might consider assigning different people to tweet on events, new members, legislation, local issues and so forth.  Having a specialist assigned to each topic is ideal from my point-of-view.
5. I would strongly recommend having anyone who is allowed to post on twitter for the Chamber sign the policy mentioned above before providing the password to the account.

While many websites today offer a news or announcements page, it still requires the Chamber executive or webmaster to log in to the website and update the information.  Chamber Nation customers know this as the news broadcaster and is accessed through the main management screen.

Never-the-less, it is much more time consuming then sending a text message to your own twitter account or accessing twitter directly via your cell phone. 

The iPhone offers several twitter applications that allow you to even include photos, maps and more with each tweet you make.  This added functionality helps your tweets ('twitters") really come alive. For instance lets say you go out to a new member business to welcome them as a new member.  By using your iPhone you can take a photo and immediately send a tweet announcing this new member and even include their picture!

Another use is to have a trusted person monitor a city hall meeting and tweet live about what is going on.  You could even rally people to come down to the meeting and fight for the Chamber cause... this works especially well when your folowers of your Chamber Twitters have activated the text messaging to send them instant updates from the Chamber.

With twitter a whole new way of comunication with your members and the community is possible.

Most people will appreciate learning what their Chamber of Commerce is doing for them and the community.  Twitter is simply the best tool I have found to do this at a Chamber.

Here where I live in Quincy California, our Chamber works very hard with a small budget to deliver big economic benefits to the community.  Nothing makes me more happy then the see the Chamber meeting and greeting businesses, carrying the cause of local business to the county board of supervisors and working on events that bring business to our local merchants.

With having a Chamber twitter their updates,  members like me can see exactly what is going on from a business development point-of-view in the community.  In this economy it's very encouraging.

I use my iPhone to check the status of our internal and external twitter communications.  This has helped me understand a great deal about our customers so we can assist them when we see they are very busy or need some additional promotional support.  

Here is how my iPhone screen looks when I check on our internal twitter communications: