Twitter in the Corporate World: Does It Really Take 45 Days for One Tweet?

According to a recent report from Business Insider journalist Aaron Taube, businesses across the world are spending more time than ever before looking to make the perfect impression via their social media accounts. Now, in a world where Twitter users send out more than 350 million tweets a day, what “more time” means is pretty relative. After all, the most prolific Twitter users seem to pop out something new every couple of minutes. As this new report shows, however, corporate teams of social media advertising experts are taking 45 days at a time to craft a single tweet.

What Do Businesses Really Have to Consider when Crafting a Tweet?
So, what is it exactly that pushes corporate accounts to mull over their latest tweets for a month and a half, while the average user continues to draft and publish their latest dribble in a few seconds? Well, frankly, businesses have a lot more to worry about than the average Twitter user — namely, millions of dollars.

You can understand why businesses would want to take a little extra time on Twitter and other social media sites than the average user. After all, there’s no telling whether a tweet will be well received or scoffed, if it will make money or lose it. What works for businesses, whether it’s the article sharing tweet or the little funny blurb that shows followers there’s a human being behind the business facade, isn’t necessarily the same as what makes ordinary Twitter users successful on the service.

What Happens when Businesses Don’t Think About Their Tweets?
Of course, the biggest reasons businesses are pumping so much time and effort into their tweets is because of what happens when they don’t. For every viral tweet that catapults a business to new levels of success there is a PR mistake that will take a business a long time to completely recover from.

The most recent gaffe was brought to us by US Airways. In early 2014, the company accidentally retweeted a pornographic image to its followers, eliciting a negative backlash from concerned customers, many of whom are parents. Another famous foul-up was committed by Kenneth Cole, an American fashion company. With a tweet that mocked the war in Syria while simultaneously trying sell shoes, the firm learned the hard way that social media can be a double-edged blade. When you realize just how wrong businesses can get it on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere, taking 45 days to fine-tune those 140 characters suddenly makes a lot more sense.