The act of Twittering is like a slight change in posture that changes your quality of life an enormous amount.
Shortly after noon on October 9, 2009, Meralco made it’s first officially sanctioned Twitter. Meralco’s Twitter account was hastily put together literally a couple of hours (or less) before. The previous evening, a fire at one of the crucial major switching stations of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) severely constrained NGCP’s ability to deliver all of Meralco’s generation resources to the Meralco system. So Meralco had to immediately initiate a series of rotating brownouts throughout its system, a delicate juggling act to balance load with available generation supply in a way that does not permanently shut off power to a single group of customers. Around 9:30 a.m. on the morning of the 9th I get a call from Joe Zaldarriaga, Meralco’s External Communications Manager who apprised me of their situation and said they would like to utilize the @meralco Twitter account (which I had been holding for purposes of turning over to Meralco). Of course. Absolutely. I subsequently worked with Kirk Campos to effect the handover after some additional due diligence on my part. Kirk said they were struggling with getting information out to the public utilizing their traditional means such as radio, print, web, and telephone. They felt Twitter would help immensely in this case. Looking back on it, I can see why. They needed to communicate information on the Manual Load Drop (MLD) schemes. The schedules are detailed and variable. There are continuous updates to the schemes statuses. No other medium works well. Twitter was perfect. Kirk also indicated that Meralco had been looking at implementing a Twitter account for some time. They were clearly ready, because within an hour or so of turnover, Meralco had uploaded logos and backgrounds for the Twitter site and they were on-line and operational. But back to the posture change and how this will impact Meralco. I’m speculating they (upper management) have no idea of the changes Twitter will engender in the culture at Meralco. You see, Twittering changes your perspective. There is a sense of humility that accompanies the act of Twittering, like in blogging. You have to think about what you’re going to say; how you’re going to explain yourself. You give consideration to all the different audiences that will read it. There is a lot of self-reflection that goes on in a flash with each and every Tweet. You can’t avoid it. Meralco may think they are doing this as a favor for their customers in getting information out. But, as Seth Godin has said about blogging, you are doing it for yourself; to force yourself to become part of the conversation. This is not about communicating what Meralco IS. It is about listening and being aware and in touch with people around you. It is about CREATING Meralco; defining what they are as they go along. It’s an act of discovery. Of change. As we all know, in Twittering or blogging, we screw up. We learn how to deal with it. This is going to be the toughest part for the traditional PR folks at Meralco. You have to lose a bit of control before you can gain control of where you’re going. I expect it will take Meralco almost a year before they get it down. In the meantime, they will just have to persevere through the mistakes, through the criticisms – a lot of which is likely to come from me. But you dust yourself off, adapt, move forward. It’s going to be interesting.