Tweeterism » Twitter for business

Twitter Helps Comcast to Get More Satisfied Customers

tweeterism — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:03:06 +0000

A Bloomberg news report yesterday talks about how Comcast has risen in customer-satisfaction ratings because it is using twitter to deal with dissatisfied customers. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Comcast’s rating rose 9 percent in the first quarter, the largest gain among cable and satellite providers.

Comcast has always had an incredibly bad reputation for horrible service, for 3 of the past 6 years, Comcast tied for the worst place in the index. Now it’s been trying to climb its way out of the hole by proactively dealing with customers using communication channels like Twitter. Here’s how Comcast uses Twitter:

Comcast employs 10 people to monitor Twitter, a site where users can post 140-character messages, or “tweets.” The representatives search for keywords “Comcast” or, occasionally, “Comcrap” to find customers who mention service complaints they can address, said Frank Eliason, Comcast’s director of digital care.

“Twitter allows us to communicate with our customers where they already are — they don’t have to pick up the phone or write an e-mail,” Eliason said. “I encourage my team to use their real names and pictures, not the Comcast logo, so we develop personal relationships with them.”

The truth is Comcast has been using Twitter to deal with customer complaints for a long time, perhaps more than a year now:

When C.C. Chapman noticed a blemish in his high-definition television’s reception during the NBA playoffs recently, he blasted a quick gripe about Comcast into the online ether, using the social network Twitter. Minutes later, a Twitter user named ComcastCares responded, and within 24 hours, a technician was at Chapman’s house in Milford to fix the problem.

“I was so floored,” said Chapman, who runs a digital marketing agency and advises companies to do what he experienced with Comcast – listen to what customers are saying about them online and respond. “When it actually happened to me, it blew me away,” he said.

@comcastcares is the Twitter account used by Frank Eliason, the ‘director of digital care’ for Comcast. While Comcast’s improvement in customer-satisfaction ratings can’t be all attributed to their use of Twitter, it does show how important Twitter is becoming as a platform to contact customers and improve their perception of your brand. Businesses should do well to take note.

There’s a Twitter Haiku Contest Going On…

tweeterism — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:52:52 +0000

A haiku is a form of Japanese poetry consisting of three metrical phrases of 5, 7 and 5 respectively. It’s an elegant and minimalistic form of expression, one that is perfect for something like Twitter. Which is why Twitter is hosting the first real-time haiku poetry competition, with judges Yoko Ono and poet Jackie Kay, picking the best verses from entries posted live on London’s Kings Cross’s biggest digital billboard.

The competition begins on Monday, May 18 and runs until Friday, May 22. Commuters arriving into Kings Cross are invited to submit three line haiku-style poems on the subject of the British summer from their mobile phones using Twitter. To submit haikus, commuters have to place the prefix @kingsplace so their entries will be picked up by the Kings Place Twitter account. The best contributions are then moderated and appear within minutes on the largest digital billboard at the station.

Winners will stand to win free entry to a weekly poetry event for the rest of the year.. it’s not a hugely enticing prize but still, its worth it if you’re in London and love poetry. This is a pretty cool way of using Twitter and I think businesses should take note of how Twitter can be leveraged to grab mindshare in public places.

How Mobile Food Vendors Use Twitter for Publicity

tweeterism — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:00:34 +0000

Twitter is a mobile tool.. you can send out updates from your phone in just about anywhere you are. Typing out a single message can reach a few thousand of people who might be equally mobile, which is why Twitter is ideal for businesses on the move, particularly food trucks.

Twitter recently became the communique of choice for the popular Kogi BBQ trucks, roving Korean-style taco vendors in Los Angeles that use the 140-character microblogs to alert customers to their whereabouts and menu items.

And the trend is spreading to other wheel meals as more food trucks — a fast-growing food phenomenon in major cities, especially in the West — are using the social networking site to draw customers.

“Kogi special at the trucks and the Alibi! Grilled asparagus with Yellow Nectarines and Sesame Seeds!” read one recent Kogi Tweet.

The decision to Twitter was a practical one, said Kogi brand manager Mike Prasad. He said Kogi needed a way to inspire repeat business while solving “the problems of being a moveable venue.”

“Then they find Twitter, something that’s separate from the venue itself that creates a virtual home,” Prasad said. “It was perfect.”

How Restaurants Use Twitter to Promote Themselves

tweeterism — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:00:35 +0000

Just read a Reuter’s article on how diners and restaurants are using Twitter to promote their menu and brand. Here are some tactics I found interesting from LA restaurants/diners:

Quinn Hatfield, of Hatfield’s restaurant in Beverly Hills, tweets the ins and outs of creating dishes, punctuated with the occasional mouth-watering picture.

Rush Street’s Nick Kaufman likes to reward people who tweet while they are dining at the Culver City eatery with things like free drinks.

“It’s kind of like I’m the man behind the curtain,” said Kaufman, who handles the restaurant’s online marketing. “People realize if they follow us they may get something out of it

There’s really a lot you can do when using Twitter to promote your offline product. One of the easiest ways I can think of is to send out updates on new products or promotions.

This actually reminds me of something called Baker Tweet:

BakerTweet is a way for busy bakers to tell the world that something hot and fresh has just come out of the oven. It’s as simple as turning the dial and hitting the button. All of the baker’s followers get a Twitter alert to tell them that it’s bun-time. Or bread time. Or whatever.

There’s money in helping brick and mortar businesses integrate Twitter easily. Marketing consultants, take note.

Creating a Twitter Feed for Conferences and Events

tweeterism — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:03:01 +0000

The Traveling Librarian blog has an simple post on how to create a Twitter conference feed so as to share content and messages about the specific conference to others who are attending or not. It’s quite easy to do and very useful especially if you are the organizer for the conference and are placed in charged of media communications.

I would add that one should designate the hashtag beforehand and actively promote it along with the account via the official marketing literature. Perhaps the conference account can be included in a press release to be sent out to the media as well, should they be covering it. This might provide them a greater experience of the conference especially if they are not attending in person.

So, for three conferences now I’ve created a Twitter RSS feed for those who are not at the conference to read the posts of those that are. The method or system isn’t perfect but I think I’ve got the major bugs worked out. So here’s how you do it.

Using Hashtags to Create Coherent Twitter Discussions

tweeterism — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:18:43 +0000

Dave Poulson talked about the use of Twitter during an internet broadcast of US Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s annual state of the state speech. The Twitter discussion online was accompanied by a hashtag established by the governor’s staff, thereby allowing other users to use the hashtag to discuss specific points. He offers some suggestions on how journalists and media can regulate Twitter discussions:

Perhaps the journalist’s role in this kind of activity is to simply help establish and publicize the hashtag. In this case, that wasn’t necessary because of the governor’s Twitter-savvy staff. But that won’t always be the case. And journalists (like any other Twitter user) can still play a role in publicizing the relevant hashtags in play.

Using good news judgment to spot when a hashtag may aid tracking breaking news or an unfolding issue, and knowing how to establish and promote a hashtag, can be a key journalistic skill. News breaks, people start discussing it on Twitter, but no hashtag appears until the discussion is well underway (making earlier tweets harder to track). Establishing hashtags early can communicate the value of good news judgment and aid the coherence of stories in social media.

This has implications beyond journalism. Businesss and brands can predetermine and promote hashtags before a special event or online twitter-based conference in order to make sure they don’t miss the conversation. It also helps each individual user to see what other users are thinking. In my opinion, the specific hashtag should accompany marketing materials or be prominently noted in the relevant webpages.

A Business Strategy for Using Twitter

tweeterism — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:30:07 +0000

Ogilvy has a simple diagram on how twitter can be used as part of a PR strategy. The gist of it is simple: monitor and follow people who are either your target market or people who can influence or affect your business. After which, create tweets which help to fulfill a specific purpose and be sure to interact widely by pro-actively engaging other users via replies or direct messages. Simple enough and it shows the basic framework for how Twitter can and is currently used by savvy businesses.