Dear companies large and small,
I am baiting you in a Twitter experiment. Are you open to hear it?
After some preliminary background, I will explain the details at the bottom of this post…
First: While Peter Kim provides us with 324 brands conducting social media marketing, John Cass indicates a mere 64 companies of the Fortune 500 are blogging.
Tsk tsk. You should be doing better.
Second: Displayed in reverse chronological order, my high school friend Seamus Condron wrote the following Twitter messages within moments of each other earlier tonight:
The takeaway is clear: Mick Shrimpton’s monitoring of social media, whether or not he limits it to Twitter, must be emulated by other brands.
That’s you.
Do the research. Think about Twitter from a customer service angle. Follow people who mention your name. Favorite them. Write them back, personalizing the company-customer relationship.
One way to listen to the buzz is to follow Sherice Jacob’s directions to use TweetBeep for email alerts.
Another way is to visit search.twitter.com and type in your company, your executive team management names, and your competitor names. See what people are saying. Get involved.
The Experiment: Meet BrandCustomer
Make sense?
The above can be clicked to zoom in.
BrandCustomer will not follow anyone. At least not at first. Maybe down the road. The test is for monitoring purposes. Who will follow and who will respond? Hmm… and will they respond publicly or privately?
You can follow case studies, as I write them, on my blog here at AriWriter. I’m devoting a special category for BrandCustomer to track the series.
Any questions or suggestions? Add a comment below or send me a message on Twitter @ariherzog.
Thank you for returning to my blog! If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, email delivery, or Kindle subscription. You may also reach me on Twitter @ariherzog.
Related posts:
- Twitter Porn and Why I’d Like to Help
- Top Signs Your Company Walks the Web But Stumbles the Talk
- Guest Interview with Rachel Kay: How Social Media Impacts Public Relations
Comments:
Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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Hi,First this is a good idea.I have been using Twitter for two whole weeks now. What follows is not blatant self promotion, although at first it will seem so as I need to introduce myself.
I am an artist and writer, the founder of Post Conceptual UnGraven Image Art theory. At the blog connected to this site you can read two articles, and the second has links to two more from Twitter users, about Twitter’s first Post Conceptual Performance Art Event. This occurred on Dec 2nd at 4:35 PM. At the time I a tad over 375 followers. A few minutes ago — and its Friday, Dec 5th at 3:19 AM all EST, I have 710. I am now following twice as many.
Twitter’s First Performance Art Success
As an artist I want to use social media, especially Twitter as it physically can become a group canvas that is transitory and unique for each viewer in many interesting ways. Although this may seem outside of your idea, artists and many writers are brands.
So in my way everything I do and my interactions are all part of myself, which is my brand. However, I am interested in communication, inspiring others and being inspired far more than sales. My job as an artist goes beyond selling goods or services.Your experiment has many social implications beyond marketing ones. Anyone on Twitter, brand or not can decide to follow Brand Consumer. Of course, I am in, as I find following to be as rewarding as being followed.
I do think you should set up a different web site for Brand Customer or at least a different page. If I was marketing a consumer brand I would not follow this as this person is obviously not a real buyer due to landing on this page. I often check the web sites of the people I follow — and I follow all of my followers.
My suggestion is you make it look as if Brand Customer might be a real person.
I intend to keep up on this. It fascinates me. Good idea! Please feel free to contact me if I can be of help.
judyrey
Judy Rey Wasserman
Perhaps your use of the phrase “I am baiting you” is why brands won’t talk to you. It’s almost school playground in its approach – “come on, I dare you. I double dare you”.
It’s “challenges” like this that keeps the likes of Twitter reserved to the few compared to the rest of online use. Stop being egotistical and demand that anybody talks to you.
2 companies I was impressed by:
– I tweeted from Newark Airport once “Boingo access like molasses in EWR” (or something to that effect), and got a reply from a Boingo rep within a few minutes saying he’d check to see if anything was wrong.
– I tweeted once that I was going to Trader Joe’s to buy my favorite hummus, and next thing I knew, Trader Joe’s was following me — and everybody else who mentions their name.
The power of Twitter!
Deanna Keahey´s last blog post..Spy vest – Product review video
Judy: Of course you are a brand, whether as a personal brand or a corporate one. I appreciate your thoughts. The idea of a separate landing page makes sense, e.g. even a fictitious Facebook page and I or someone else may try that in the future. For now, the test is to see who responds and how they respond.
Sheila: I respect your thoughts and agree with you. This experiment is not about me. It’s not about ego. It’s not about what *I* get out of it, but what the brand gets out of it. For all I know, nobody is tweeting about XYZ, but maybe XYZ is considering joining Twitter and may decide to run some TweetBeeps. If BrandCustomer mentions XYZ, that may provide value to XYZ to send a message to BrandCustomer. That’s my hope. Then, the Twitter community can celebrate XYZ as another company that “gets it,” no?
Deanna: Neat about Trader Joe’s. Did you tweet that it was following you when it did? Then your other followers monitoring your stream at that moment would know.
this makes a lot of sense as an experiment. Lots of people in the seo community run tests like this. great concept. Thanks for the f500 mention. I was thinking we should also list any use of the social media by f500 companies, so we can compare the results with the inc 500 study.
Loving this experiment Ari, I’m going to be really curious to see what happens with this twitter id and how it develops for you. @crowdSPRING probably does this kind of customer service/marketing the best. Anyone mentions “design” or any number of things related to graphic design is instantly followed and talked with. It’s a great model. I recommend you check it out (if you already haven’t)
Stuart Foster´s last blog post..The State of the Micromediapshere – Guest Panelist
There are a myriad of brands that are using Twitter in a variety of ways and sadly, in a variety of implementations: great (@Zappos, @comcastcares, @wholefoods) and poor. So this will be very interesting experiment. Are you trying to see how well the brand’s search capability is by who finds you or will you actually be asking questions and grading the response?
Warren Sukernek´s last blog post..Around the World in 140 Characters – Notes from Ev’s speech to Churchill Club
Great post and ideas Ari. I have a feeling over the next six months we will see a lot more brands jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. People are quick to look for errors in the way brands are using Twitter, blatant promotion and marketing, but from the brands that are following me, I really haven’t seen that much at all! What I have seen is a personality coming through when they comment on things outside of their businesses, and it makes me feel good that they sought me out to follow (If they are relevant, like @expediainc, because I use them to book travel). For those brands that are nervous to get on, it may be a case of feeling guilty before proven innocent. Many Twitterers seem to be eagerly waiting for brands to make a mistake. Let’s not make it damned if they do (use Twitter) and damned if they don’t. This is a great time to build relationships with our favorite brands like we were never able to with traditional advertising.
John: Have you cross-checked your list with Peter Kim’s? (It would be great if Peter’s could notate which brands are F500,F100, etc)
Stuart: I heard of crowdspring in passing; will check out. Thanks!
Warren: I’m very curious which brands will auto-follow…and auto direct message. I recently saw that occurrence from a taco chain, and through some DMs back and forth, they changed their ways. I wonder if I can ethically mention a company for sending an auto direct message. Thoughts?
Rachel: I’m hopeful brands can see this experiment as, well, an experiment. If your PR firm is walking the walk and if BrandCustomer tweets your firm by name, you should know within 72 hours. Do you? How do you respond? Would you respond? Questions like that are what I hope to better understand. And if it can help Shel Israel and Laura Fitton as they develop their books, all the better. Thanks for adding value.
I have not cross checked, but may do so, to start building that list.
I’m going to use #brandcustomer when I talk about companies, if you don’t mind – and especially if it helps your experiment. Two brands that have followed me are Scottrade and Tokbox (@dbillian). I really like how Tokbox uses Twitter – pretty much like a help site. And late one night (OK, not this late!), I called for @dbillian and he was helping me out in like 15 minutes. It’s like the call centers that call you back when it’s your turn in the cue, but more personal. Very cool when done well.
Adriel Hampton´s last blog post..10 Cool Twitter People at GovLoop.com
I think John is right, and Brogan mentioned it recently – the magic of twitter is in the research it allows. I manage a company account and we do follow your advice of keeping track of our own and our competitor mentions. I used the search.twitter. tool and set up an RSS feed into a company Google reader account. (Also I keep track of key phrases related to our work.)
However, I do not think I will be following @BrandConsumer anytime soon. I try to keep a pretty strict rule with the company account of only following accounts that are willing to follow back. Certainly a debated issue, I see the openness of conversation as a goal. Plus, I think we offer valuable tweets, through which people in the industry can get useful links.
In sum, our company uses twitter to search. We use our account to converse.
Hi Ari, we’re now following you on Twitter. Please reciprocate by following the Los Angeles Times (@latimes) at http://www.twitter.com/latimes so that we can engage in meaningful two-way, albeit asynchronous, conversation with you and your personal brand.
While you’re at it, I’d love to see some serious analysis of the value of real-time versus asynchronous conversations, and recommendations on when one-to-one communication is more appropriate than blogging and one-to-many blasts.
Sincerely,
- AndrewN, social media guy in the LA Times / latimes.com newsroom
AndrewN´s last blog post..U.S. details case against Blackwater guards
I posted a request on my Twitter asking for advice on a blog post I was writing. As an intern, I was asking professionals on good intern etiquette.
Southwest Airlines (@southwestair) sent me a DM with some great advice. There was no plug about flying Southwest next time or anything like that. It was just there to genuinely help me out. Hey, there’s got to be someone running the Twitter account, and this was a nice reminder that those people are humans, too.
Nick Lucido´s last blog post..Goals in the Workplace
Hi Ari, looking forward to your followup blog post. Ping me if you’d like to do an interview beforehand. I’m curious to learn more about what you mean by “They’re not what they claim on Twitter.”
- AndrewN, social media guy in the LA Times / latimes.com newsroom
I did the cross check, I did not find any new Fortune 500 companies with blogs from Pete’s list. Most of the f500 have been reviewed in the last year, but I still do need help with completing the list.
John Cass´s last blog post..FIR’s Trust In Blogging Panel
While I applaud your idea, the execution may need some tuning over the course of the experiment.
You seem to be a savvy user of the tools and of social media theory, so I hope you won’t mind if I speak plainly as one of the subjects of your experiment. (yes, I’m clearly stepping outside the bounds of scientist and subject to discuss methodology)
In an effort to show transparency, I’m the person responsible for the Twitter account of JetBlue Airways. When I saw your @BrandCustomer tweet directed at @JetBlue this morning asking for more information on the account ‘handeler,’ I certainly did respond, though likely not in the manner you may have expected: I responded via my personal Twitter account: @MHJohnston. Your request was for more transparency from me, and I’m happy to oblige.
I would posit that any business that interacts with @BrandCustomer as they would any other user, may require further investigation into their social media acuity as with a bit of looking around, it’s quickly discovered that the entire effort is an individual’s experiment.
Businesses interacting with @BrandCustomer as if it were a ‘real’ customer must then be split in to two additional categories: those who go along to appease your desire for the illusion of a customer dialogue – but will risk bias in their responses, or those companies that are only doing surface scanning of Twitter feeds believing it to be an actual customer, and will certainly miss out on the real conversation that actually is occurring. Which of these is a more responsible citizen of social media?
While I may like to pretend I’m observant enough to try to play the role of the former business case, I’m likely closer to the later where I scan, but rarely dig into the profile of those who have requests of us. However, your tweet triggered a secondary glance for one often overlooked reason: While there’s a desire to answer questions, there’s also a need to balance that with a requirement to act responsibly for the rest of our followers.
As willing as I was to be transparent, the answer would have been of little use to the rest of our 8,200+ followers. In these circumstances I’d try to DM – which you pointedly aren’t allowing as @BrandCustomer doesn’t reciprocally follow.
(This gives rise to another question – At what level is a company required to maneuver to help a customer who doesn’t understand or isn’t willing to work within the limitations and ‘norms’ of a tool? I suspect the level is in correlation to the importance – and legitimacy of the request.)
As our Twitter account has grown and responded to the needs of our followers I feel that our particular public corporate feed isn’t the place for the self-referential discourse on corporate roles in Social Media. To put it more bluntly and in my own personal feelings: If Twitter is to be excepted as a legitimate tool within society we need to stop the naval gazing and focus on using the tools in everyday practice. Those of us who remember the early days of blogging will certainly recall a similar amount of introspection when we all gloried in, “the power of the blogger” – but it wasn’t until the posturing stopped and actually writing began that the promise of the medium was recognized by the public at large.
While I’m certainly interested in the role of businesses in social media (as evidenced by this ever-growing comment – it’s a subject I’ve put a lot of thought into) I’m determined to keep at least the tent-pole Twitter identity of @JetBlue clear of the meta-discourse often asked of it, and strive to be the service our customers wish it to be.
All this being said, I also understand that you – @ariherzog are also at least a potential customer and should have your opinions factor in to how our role is shaped on Twitter. So I’ll certainly ask if you or any of your readers think I’m on the right track. Conversations and experiments such as yours are certainly important in understanding where the center-line is, and I’m always willing to course-correct should it be required.
And I’m always willing to get into the theory of it all on my personal Twitter account.
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