Friday, October 10, 2008

Tweeting Your Way to Better Customer Relations

From Katie Noonan - An excellent post last week on Oglivy’s 360° Digital Influence blog by Kaitlyn Wilkins offered some great tips for companies using Twitter as a part of their public relations campaigns.

Wilkins interviewed Ginevra Whalen, TypePad’s Community Manager, who handles @sixapart, the company’s Twitter account. According to Whalen, “Web 2.0 technologies allow customers to get superior service without even having to seek it out…but only if [companies] take full advantage of them.”

Whalen uses Twitter to keep tabs on customers’ concerns, frustrations, and general feelings on their products, by following those users and responding to their feedback via e-mail or direct message. This approach allows Whalen and the rest of the TypePad team to reach out to individual customers as well as gauge customers’ overall satisfaction with their products. So far this approach has been met with a great deal of enthusiasm from customers “tweeting” about TypePad’s various products.

Whalen’s best advice for companies just starting out on Twitter is to show personality by not limiting “tweets” to press releases, or company news. According to Whalen, it’s important to show a human side to the company. She recommends “tweeting” about birthdays, events and other fun goings-on. It could mean the difference between appearing genuine and engaged in customer relations, or trying to bombard the Twitter community with shameless company plugs.

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