The Jury is Still Out on Twitter
I have seen some successful customer service interactions on Twitter and experienced not some not-so-great customer service interactions on Twitter, specifically involving Dell. I am still not exactly certain how Twitter can be successful from the individual user, or customer, perspective. If you are a corporation looking to get involved in Twitter from the perspective of generating original content, how can you generate content that people actually want to read? Obviously, most people don’t really care about the mundane things, such as me sending a tweet saying that I am driving to work this morning. The people who are preaching about Twitter as an opportunity for your business to get engaged with social media seem, to me, to be more interested in increasing their number of followers or the number of tweets they send versus really trying to engage with the audience. I question, do you actually [have a signal with] your customer or you are just generating a bunch of noise? If you have 100,000 followers, I challenge you to show me that you actually can have an interactive relationship with all 100,000 people. So if you are just generating and broadcasting content for the sake of hearing yourself talk, and that’s your objective, maybe Twitter is for you. If you are actually using it to try to connect with people, I still have yet to see how that is actually a viable option.
The other thing that I have noticed is that many of those who are preaching about twitter or generating the most content or the most followers also happen to be male. Now, this may sound exceptionally reverse-chauvinist or reverse-sexist, but I wonder if what is at play here is that women in their 30’s and 40’s have kids and careers and families and are trying to balance them all. The things that get cut from your time are those things that don’t have the biggest bang for their buck. I am wondering if Twitter is one of those that has yet to show a big bang for the buck and is, therefore, being dropped from the radar of some individual women. Now again, I don’t have any substantial proof to make these statements but it is just a feeling I have, especially when I am talk to several women also in the field of marketing and advertising that feel the same way about how can you incorporate Twitter as an effective communication strategy.
In the subsequent post, I will talk a little bit about the rich customer service opportunities that abound, monitoring the conversation about your brand using Twitter, and finding ways to have conversations with individuals that I have seen to be successful. But –just Tweeting for the sake of hearing yourself talk is not an effective communication strategy unless your whole goal is simply to make yourself look good and make noise.
2 Comments »
Leave a Reply
About Me
I am currently the president and general manager at Access Marketing Company. You can read my full resume on my LinkedIn profile. Some of my favorite accomplishments include canning and preserving much of my summer vegetable and fruit garden, being part of the St. Louis Business Journal Class of 2007 Top 40 under 40, and continuing to play beach doubles volleyball – even placing in an EVP doubles tournament.
Subscribe
Beth Keserauskis 
Valid points. My first reaction is to say that twitter right now is just noise. But it’s noise with good intentions. It’s still fairly new and businesses are just now starting to see potential uses to grow.
My team at work recently had this discussion. What makes twitter successful? My response to them was that it’s not the number of followers, it’s the quality of interactions, retweets, SEO value, conversions…I could go on. But I don’t think it’s the number of followers.
I will say–it will be interesting to watch what happens in 2010 with social media. There have been predictions that will skyrocket. I’m seeing businesses pop-up based purely around being social media “gurus” which makes me a little nervous. We’re all learning and no one is an expert quite yet. Some know more than others, but still– something businesses need to be leery of.
Thanks for commenting! I have experienced a few successful customer service uses on twitter–both on the receiving and giving ends. But the bottom line on both of them was that someone was monitoring the search for their business names (or in my giving case, the phrase SIUE) and taking advantage of an interaction opportunity. There’s a lot of one-on-one opportunity to build relationships–especially if your customers are using the technology!!!
Thanks again Andreea–I am so glad someone is paying attention! 🙂