Twitter is the fastest growing social media network and has gained huge popularity in the past couple of years. If it is used right by businesses it can be a great tool to build a brand, enhance reputation and ultimately gain customers.
The first point to make is that if a business sets up a Twitter account with the intention of using it to ‘hard sell’ their product, then it’s probably not going to be very effective.
I recently had a conversation with a client who told me that a marketing/SEO company had recommended that he buy an automated marketing service that bombarded any Twitter user who tweeted certain keywords in a particular location with his company’s advert. So, basically, spamming.
This isn’t the way to go and will probably just result in the Twitter user blocking the business and reporting them as spam. More importantly, it will most likely put the Twitter user off ever using the company’s services.
The more a business puts into Twitter, the more they can expect to get out. Spending a little time each day interacting with followers, sharing knowledge and answering questions is a great way to build a following and enhance a company’s reputation.
It’s also important to remember that Twitter is a two way process. If a business uses their account solely to relentlessly market their own services, then they’re unlikely to gain many followers. The most effective business Twitter users are those who follow other like-minded users, engage with their customers and are generally interesting to read.
3 Comments
As well as using Twitter to build up contacts I’ve also seen good use of it for customer service.
Having the ability to put your complaint in front of the public domain (more so than forums etc) means that a) other people can add they have the same problem and b) it will hopefully get sorted out pretty quickly – which to most is considered good customer service.
I do have one problem though – some clients come to me saying they want Twitter – I ask them ‘What for?’ and they don’t know, they just want it. You have to have some kind of model if you’re going to use Twitter (and Facebook) for your business or it will cause more problems than it solves.
I agree – clients will often ask for Twitter to be integrated into their website then after a few weeks won’t bother to use it. A badly run, rarely updated Twitter account brings the risk of actually having an adverse effect on the first impressions that a potential customer has of a business.
Additionally, if customers have the ability to voice complaints in a public forum, then it’s essential that they’re acted upon quickly – so having a Twitter account that is only checked once per month is asking for trouble!