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Some of the most thought-provoking conversations I see happen on Twitter and this question from Deb Ng sparked a great one this week:
I'm big on watching grammar in my social updates as a #CMGR. Saw a CM use "Didja" today and cringed. What do you think CMs? #cmgrchat
— Deborah Ng (@debng) June 4, 2013
Sherrie Rohde (of MyCMGR) pointed out that it depends on the audience. This audience in particular were "intelligent social media professionals and bloggers," supplied Deb.
While the consensus was that this particular example was possibly inappropriate for the audience, Jillian Jackson pointed out that conversational patterns shouldn't be verboten in all online communication.
@debng i think that's really one of those things certain brands can get away with. it really has to be in the brand personality #cmgrchat
— Jillian. Not Jill. (@OneJillian) June 4, 2013
I think we can all agree that colloquial phrases don't always belong in corporate messaging, but with more and more companies trying to use social media as a "human" face of their business, is there a growing place for conversational writing? Quite a few community manager job descriptions actually mention being able to write in a conversational, personable manner as one of the requirements.
As a professional, does casual language and messaging turn you off? What about as a customer? Is there a middle ground?
(Image: Question mark in Esbjerg, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from drachmann's photostream)
