The real people behind 4 popular agency Twitter accounts speak out at #SMWNYC | Blogads
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The real people behind 4 popular agency Twitter accounts speak out at #SMWNYC

by
February 16th, 2012

Behind every agency Twitter account lurks an actual human. Four such tweetsmiths joined me in the first panel of yesterday’s Blogads Social Media Spectacular, “The voice behind the curtain: Agency tweeters revealed!”

Here are some of the best stories and reactions from the Twitter-crazy crowd that gathered at the Gershwin Hotel.

The panelists and the tweets
Unfortunately, writing tweets isn’t a full time job for everyone. Here’s who the panelists are, what they do in an official capacity, and some exemplary tweets from their agency’s accounts.

Jon Accarrino:  Director of Social Media, Definition 6


Sam Weston: Director, Communication, Huge

 

Chapin Clark: EVP, Managing Director, Copy, R/GA

Evan Shumeyko: Director, Connections, Ogilvy & Mather

Do their colleagues contribute to the Twitter feed? Do their colleagues tell them how to tweet?

Jon: People in the office will say “take a picture and tweet it” and he says, “YOU take the picture and maybe I’ll tweet it if it’s good.”

Sam: Huge’s tweets are written by a committee of copywriters, and Sam has the final say of what goes out. Sometimes people will send ideas to him, but most of the time people leave him alone — although sometimes senior management tells him he’s “doing it wrong”

Chapin: He’ll talk to colleagues about their specialty since they know what they are talking about more than he does. They don’t feel comfortable tweeting, so they will feed something to him.

Evan: People used to be afraid to tweet. He was the first one to jump into it, so now it’s his job.

Sam: People should be more afraid to tweet.

Biggest twitter reactions from our audience.

I vs We: As the person who writes most of the tweets for the @Blogads account, I was curious, do you tweet as “I” or “We” when you are speaking as the agency?

Spontaneity: Do you schedule your tweets in advance, or write them as they come to you?

Other cool stories from behind the curtain.

Sometimes the Twitter accounts are used to promote cool projects that the agencies are working on. Sometimes the Twitter accounts are part of the cool projects themselves.

Last year, as Hurricane Irene moved up the East Coast, worried Twitter users began to tweet at @Irene, perhaps hoping to talk the storm out of coming ashore. When the geniuses at Huge realized that the account was owned by a Huge employee named Irene, they talked her into surrendering her account to their copywriters. As the hurricane advanced along the Eastern Seaboard, @Irene tweeted out storm-related witticisms, peppered with real public service announcments for people who thought she might be the real hurricane.

Other cools stories included R/GA’s #OfficeCupid, which tweeted out Valentines on behalf of office crushers, Definition 6’s use of Puppy Tweets to promote a dog-friendly office environment, and what it’s like for Evan to tweet in the voice of a 60-year-old British man.

Twitres?

Each panel at the Social Media Spectacular featured a Tetris-like board that filled up with Twitter profile pics as the crowds tweeted out the panels’ hashtags.

Thank you so much to our panelists and to the audience who asked some awesome question while keeping the Tweetris board alive. If you were at our panel, we might have taken a photo of you, so check out our Social Media Spectacular Facebook album and tag yourself if you see yourself!

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