Twittermania has only begun. In the days after Oprah’s show, Twitter’s traffic growth is accelerating. The ratings service HitWise now ranks twitter.com as America’s No. 38 Web site. It’s about to rocket past CNN and Wells Fargo.
But not only do you need to add social media but also commit to using them. Just experimenting with the idea is unlikely to produce any significant impact. A far better course to take is to concentrate on an objective—what do you want to have happen as a result of employing social media?—and then measure progress toward that goal. Without focusing on measurable objectives, it’s difficult to justify further investment. Or as the philosopher George Harrison put it: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
Start thinking of Twitter as an educational resource. Especially in this economy, things are changing often in our bluegreen-twitter1industry. Certainly from day to day we’re seeing changes, but those changes can even happen hour by hour, as well. If there’s something that you should know about, most likely your Twitter friends (called “followers” on Twitter) will notify you. Oftentimes, information can flow faster on Twitter than it can from the “normal” news and media sources that we usually get information from. And if you have a general question about something, asking your “followers” can oftentimes get you an answer faster than searching Google for the same information. Remember, it’s all in real-time.
“Clearly, there is a disconnect between personal exposure and professional ability that is unique to social media,” the MarketingSherpa study remarks. “This disconnect is one of the most critical dangers to the successful adoption of social media as a marketing strategy.” To mitigate risks, the study recommends that companies seek an outside agency or consultant to implement social media initiatives.
An outside agency (although helpful) isn’t required. Outside thinking is.
In his BlogWell New York case study presentation, “Listening in the Social Media Era,” Microsoft’s Worldwide Director of Microsoft Community Support Services, Nestor Portillo, describes how to capture the voice of your customers and incorporate it into your product or service by engaging influences and using social media analytical tools.
Microsoft is using the voice of the customer to innovate products and services, identify broad and high impact problems, and deflect support costs by proactively posting relevant, easy-to-discover content. The big point that Nestor stressed was that companies need to listen to the people using their services and to interact directly with them, otherwise they may not be a customer for much longer.
Social media case study from Megan Parker and Sean Gannon of GE
In the BlogWell New York case study presentation, “Telling Our Story,” Sean Gannon and Megan Parker talk about how, at times, the best and most effective way to tell your story is to take it straight to the people who care. GE launched GEReports.com in October 2008, and in just a few short months, has seen great success and learned valuable lessons in engaging with those people who are actively interested in the happenings at GE.
GE has to deal with unifying a diverse company — one that has branches in entertainment, consumer electronics, medical equipment, and jet engines. GE found success by catering to the interests of their fans: Their blog is published on the website, via RSS, and as an email newsletter; the GE Reports videos go on YouTube, and Megan Parker is available on the company’s Twitter account.
Using social media for business is not about developing a larger list of followers or friends. To successfully use social media for business, you must focus on the social aspect, in other words, you need to build relationships.
This article emphasizes the importance of develpong these online relationships. View here
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Twitter and similar services are being adopted by companies such as JetBlue and Alcatel-Lucent to help improve customer service and teamwork across business units and continents.
As a customer service tool, Twitter’s advantage is that almost everything people say on the service is public and easy to find using Twitter’s built-in search. That makes Twitter an instant focus group, made up of millions of people, many of whom are your customers.
