The Twitter Strategy Blog Series: Post #1, Customer Relations
by Kristin Parrish
Category: Best Practices, How-To
Over the past few months, there have been a multitude of posts around Twitter, specific case studies and best practices for using Twitter in a business sense.
- An informal poll created on Twitwall shows that over half of the respondents joined Twitter to start new relationships or build upon existing relationships. Of that, 34% of those polled were joining Twitter to start and maintain business relationships with colleagues, industry leaders and customers.
- A Marketing Vox post gives a brief overview of Nikki Bairds’ insights on Twitter, focusing on what’s being said about your company, and how to make your brand more visible on Twitter.
- And if you are overwhelmed by the number of followers or those you are following, Peter Kim provides his thoughts on who to follow and how to better organize your Twitter experience with a variety of different tools, including Tweetdeck, which allows you to organize your followers into specific categories (i.e. industry leaders, customers, etc.).
These are just a few of the recent Twitter insights, just Google it and you will find dozens more.
To further the “Twit-olution”, we wanted to provide a bit more of a deep dive into key Twitter strategies that companies can take on to meet business and communication goals, keeping in mind do’s and don’ts of Twitter throughout.
Over the next few weeks, we will be providing you with a look into a variety of specific Twitter strategies for:
- Customer Relations
- Crisis Management
- Corporate Reputation Management
- Event Coverage
- Issues Advocacy
- Product Promotion and Sales
- Internal Communication
In all of these strategies, you are going to see three key steps: follow, create and engage. These are really the three main steps to Twitter of which we have expanded upon to provide detailed recommendations specific to each strategy.
First up, the much discussed, often necessary customer relations strategy.
A CNN report highlights the urgent need for businesses to invest in new modes of customer communication and to tailor their approaches to match customer preferences with specific mention of social media and the use of new conversation platforms, like Twitter.
A customer relations strategy on Twitter is essential for consumer marketers whose products and services can and are already being talked about. There are a lot of great insights out there already around this strategy. So let’s take a second to really break down the key steps in setting up and maintaining a strong customer relations handle on Twitter.
As with any of these strategies, before kicking things off, make sure you develop a complete strategy (see below for more details on customer relations).
- Establish a Twitter handle and profile that sets the expectation for your followers. Be clear in the handle bio and description as to what you will be focusing on and who you represent.
- The name of the company should be included in at least your bio, and ideally your handle (this will help people find your brand) as well.
- Disclose whether the handle will be maintained by one individual or a team of people within the company.
- Define the roles and responsibilities internally amongst your team members (including how frequently your Tweets should be updated, who should and should not be followed/responded to, and how you should respond in various situations).
Once you have determined your Twitter handle and internal responsibilities, here are the key steps in developing a audience and maintaining an active conversation with your customers:
1. FOLLOW
Find out what people are saying about your brand through Twitter search functions like, Search.Twitter (f.k.a Summize) and TweetScan. Search.Twitter is a bit more in-depth and allows you to complete an advanced search around key phrases, within specific dates, and from specific handles.
To make it easy, set up an RSS feed for your Twitter searches, so that you can easily check in to see new conversations around the brand.
Get familiar with these conversations and start to follow key contributors, customers and brand “lusters” (coined by Virginia, as those who are interested in your brand but not yet customers).
This is also where an organization tool like TweetDeck can come in handy to help you categorize those you are following.
2. CREATE
All Twitter handles should have a clear personality - even for customer service. Keep in mind the overall personality of your brand as you tweet and make sure you are providing valuable information to your followers.
As you identify conversations and start to follow your customers, you will be able to get an idea of what they are looking for. What do they want to know? Are they asking for product information? Looking for tips on using a service or fixing a product? This should be the guideline for your content.
With the 140-character limit, use tinyurl or snurl to direct followers to relevant information and useful resources outside of Twitter. (Snurl lets you pick your OWN shortcode, which means you can track only those links that originate with YOU)
3. ENGAGE
While you can be providing general information to your followers on a regular basis, you also want to make sure your customers know they are being heard.
Focus on replying to individuals who have questions about your brand, who are sharing their brand experiences and to those to whom you can provide helpful information and resources.
Direct Messages are also useful for corresponding privately with others. Go ahead and send new followers a direct message thanking them for their interest and providing any additional information or resources that could be useful.
GREAT EXAMPLES
A lot of companies are establishing their brand on Twitter and starting to dabble in customer responses - @JetBlue, @Zappos, and of course @comcastcares. Check them out as well as a few more in this recent Business Week presentation.
Frank Eliason at Comcast started @comcastcares in April 2008 in response to the customer conversations he and his team found on Twitter through monitoring. offers customers specific troubleshooting tips, online resources, new product info and a key customer relations personality (e.g. Frank’s).
Check them out as well as a few more in this recent Business Week presentation.
Like always, we want to get your feedback. Share your customer service experiences on Twitter with us - whether your the company or the customer.
And stay tuned for our next post in the series…
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October 25th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Hi Kristin - would love to hear your thoughts on the scalability issues behind using Twitter as a channel. E.g. I like how JetBlue rotates staff and tells readers who’s on in their “bio” section. But Frank at Comcast is one person - seems like a lot of work. Sustainable?
October 25th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
I’m curious why you suggest companies send direct messages to new followers. I frequently receive direct messages from people, let alone companies, but then when I try to respond by DM, I get a message the sender is not following ME, so I must resort to a public response.
Moreover, how does a direct message help a company’s profile when a public tweet is, well, publicly seen and searchable and adds to its transparency? Unless there is a need to be private, why go the extra layer?
You may enjoy a recent article of mine on how I use Twitter:
http://www.ariwriter.com/2008/10/how-i-use-twitter-and-why-you-and-tbs-should-care/
October 25th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Another little footnote I’d add about using Twitter:
Businesses need to understand what Twitter means withing its larger context of its going concern. Using Twitter in a mechanized ‘buy me’ way is not only ineffective, it is self-defeating.
Twitter’s pliancy allows for hundreds of uses, from helping followers keep up-to-date, offer real-time assistance with problems, etc. But it needs to be personal and meaningful.
@Peter Kim:
Twitter does require dedicated efforts, especially for larger enterprises. It probably can be scaled well, but it requires the right kind of people organized in a workable fashion.
What Frank Eliason has done serves as a remarkable starting point for anybody interested in using Twitter the right way.
–
Bottom line: get your own Twitter account, plunge in and play around. That’s the best way to ‘get it’. Just remember that what you write is searchable and can be embedded in angry blog posts around the web.
October 25th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Question for anyone reading…do you think corporate twitter accounts should use a corporate logo, or a face to better personalize the account. I find when I tweet at a face, I feel a stronger connection than when I tweet at a logo. As such, I am seriously considering changing my company twitter from its current logo status to a face-shot or a pic of my mgmt team. (http://twitter.com/innogage). What do other people think? Logo or Face?
October 26th, 2008 at 4:41 am
Thanks for this post and I’d like to respond to Tom Williams question. First, I’d like to qualify my response that I’m certainly not an expert on Twitter but I can certainly comment from a user’s point of view.
I agree that a picture of a person’s face creates intimacy and generally helps an individual to like and trust you more though obviously there are exceptions. In some cases, I refuse to connect with someone if I don’t know the face behind the logo.
Someone who uses their logo very effectively is Mark Joyner, founder of Simpleology. Mark uses a logo but I’ve gotten to know him in a variety of ways. Plus he doesn’t keep his identity secret so when I see his logo I instantly connect to it.
Similarly, when a company has a well-known brand and logo then it doesn’t bother me that they use their logo. In fact, I often expect them to do so.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Kristen, In reading your first post on a series on Twitter I am glad to see the research you’ve listed first as the grounds for using Twitter as a new corporate channel of communication. Your Follow, Create and Engage method is a solid action plan for any company with an existing brand and expectations they would like to fulfill in their market when they are vying for a clear voice to be heard.
@Tom: Twitter succeeds as one to one communication channel that is transparent to the public. Most people will feel more comfortable tweeting to a person than a company logo. One of the fundamental decisions to using twitter is: What kind of brand are you trying to build? One that is built on you as a person as an extension of your company or your company brand as a group of people who are visibly connected to the core values of the company?
You can find some of my views on Twitter for business on my blog. I also recommend anyone considering Twitter for a business capacity to watch Hubspot’s Twitter video on marketing and pr: http://www.hubspot.com/twitter-for-marketing
October 26th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Great post Kristen! Way to start off the series with a bang…
October 27th, 2008 at 8:41 am
It amazes me that all sorts of business geniuses are coming out of the closet touting “Twitter” strategy. It is unclear to me why Twitter is being segregated from other social media networks.
People really need to step away from the *buzz* for a moment, and realize that they should be engaging, replying, and offering customer service on every social network where their customers are. Not just Twitter.
@A_F
November 13th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Great article Kristen, and very insightful comments from everyone. I never thought about using Twitter in such a way to keep in touch and in tune with our customers. And I agree with Andrew on reaching out on all possible social networks. I use to think it was gimmicky for companies to have their own MySpace page, but now I see it’s just a way for them to reach out to a different generation of customers.
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