Yup, officially every single person is on Twitter… including the Queen.
The Royal Household has set up an official Twitter page, which you can find at @BritishMonarchy. Whether there are in fact any Royals actively updating the Royal Household feed I very much doubt. However, the
relationship between the British nation and the Monarchy can be pretty turbulent, to say the very least, and this leap towards social media if implemented carefully could definately help the monarchy reconnect with its audience.
If you think about it the British Monarchy is very much like a business and over the past few years they have suffered a severe image and reputation crisis, with the Monarchy being branded stuffy, old fashioned and over indulgent in recent times. However, some new Royals, cooler and more ‘in touch’ Royals, have been making the headlines; Harry, William, Beatrice and Eugiene have all hit the headlines, for various reasons and not all of it good, but they have got us talking about the Royal family again and for the first time, in a long time, young adults are interested in hearing about what our Monarchs are up to.
With the increasing popularity of the younger Royals it seems timely that they would take steps towards connecting with the younger market on social media platforms. However, just like any business careful planning is required. There is great potential for a monarchy Twitter profile, giving snippets of information about who they are and what they actually do, sadly, however, the @BritishMonarchy is simply a press machine churning out links back to the official Monarchy website. If, which I am presuming they are trying to do, the Monarchy are trying to shred their stuffy image then an impersonal and PR fuelled Twitter pages isn’t going to cut it. I am not too sure if I am a fan of the Monarchy or not, which is mostly down to the fact that I know very little about them, but I would certainly pay attention to something that showed me the true personalities within the Royal family and this Twitter profile is that opportunity.
Of course the potential risks they face by ‘sharing’ online could be damaging to the Monarchy as a whole; they could lose the respect of the ‘non-twitter’ generation and the potential media frenzies that could result from a poorly thought out Tweet is enough to bring their press team out in hives I am sure, but, and this is a big but, I am fairly confident this risk would be worth it. There is a potential new audience out there waiting to be engaged with, they’ve read all about the young Royals antics in the newspaper and I am pretty confident they would also be interested to hear what they have to say online.
Habitat has been utilising the current conflict in Iran for their own benefit on Twitter. Sounds a bit crazy huh? They have in fact been using hashtags such as #Iran and #Mousavi to get their name and products into the hotly debated discussions going on in Twitter about the current issues in Iran.
