In an online Lunch+Learn webinar titled Twitter for Business, Brian Gieson from Ogilvy’s 360° Digital Influence and Jonathan Crossfield from Netregistry outlined the basic steps needed for businesses to successfully leverage the micro blogging service which has seen a 3200% increase in use in the past year (Hitwise).
According to Gieson, the key strategy that businesses should follow to succeed on Twitter are to follow, create and engage. These three strategies can be applied to a variety of uses for Twitter. As a first step businesses should identify the objective for using Twitter:
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Customer service
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Product promotion or sales
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Crisis management
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Event activation
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Issues advocacy
Follow
No matter what your aim for Twitter, you should aim to follow the people talking about your product, your competitor’s products and any relevant search terms. While you can use the standard Twitter website Twitter.com and search.Twitter.com, it is much more efficient to use advanced tools such as the Adobe Air-based TweetDeck or web-based applications such as PeopleBrowsr (a favourite here at Digital Media).
Create
To create an effective Twitter account, businesses must be transparent in its objectives. You should:
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Create a Twitter handle with a clear personality; be sure to register similar handles to prevent brand squatting. (Something that sister publication B&T (@bandt) had to deal with recently)
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Tweet information relevant to your customers and objective. I.e. product upgrades, proactive tips, company information, links to online promotions/competitions.
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Consider Twitter-only promotions.
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If you find yourself in crisis management mode, post regular updates clearly outlining the status of the issue and steps your organisation is taking.
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If you are promoting an event, create an event specific hashtag (This webinar used #Twitter4biz).
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In all situations if the message you want to convey requires more than 140 characters, link to a blog post. When linking it is wise to use URL shortening services such as bit.ly or tr.im. These services also have the advantage of tracking clicks.
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Try to keep your tweets regular. Giesen and Crossfield agree that 10-12 tweets per day is ideal. Using automated services are generally frowned upon, especially when it dumps five tweets in a row. (I’m looking at you Twitterfeed).
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While creating compelling content and Tweets is important, it’s only half the story. The real value that comes from Twitter is from engagement.
Engage
Engagement is the key to using Twitter successfully as it is a two-way communication tool, albeit one limited to 140 characters.
To engage, businesses should consider:
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Answering questions posed by Twitter users. This can be about products, services, events or even crisis related issues.
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Respond to any direct questions within an appropriate timeframe. The speakers recommended a maximum of 48-hour turnaround for a first response. However they did cite BigPond’s customer service account as a shining example with Twitter ‘opening hours’ described in the bio.
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Follow up leads and consider closing sales directly on Twitter. Crossfield noted an example of a sizeable acquisition conducted entirely on Twitter. The case study showed that providing quick, accurate information can lead to immediate revenue.
However despite the success stories, any business delving into Twitter may want to consider their approach carefully. Whilst there have been some major successes such as
Dell, there have also been some disaster stories, especially if businesses attempt to use disruptive marketing.
HabitatUK, a furniture business in the UK,
was exposed spamming the Twitter trending topics with their official account. This caused a wave of bad press and is a prime example of how not to use Twitter.
The slides from the presentation are below and you can access a recording of the full webinar, which was run using Citrix GoToMeeting,
here. The recording runs for a little over an hour.
Has your business used Twitter effectively or has it been a disaster? Let Digital Media know in the comments or via our Twitter account @digitmedia.
Tags:
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Citrix |
customer service |
GoToMeeting |
Social Media Marketing |
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