A few questions for companies to consider as they join Twitter

More and more companies have joined the Twitterverse. Over the past week, I have been followed by Whole Foods, Starbucks, American Airlines and Popeyes Chicken. Hopefully, these companies and others are discovering that Twitter is a great place to join the conversation with those customers.  Much has been written here and elsewhere about ways to facilitate those conversations. But as companies jump on the Twitter bandwagon, I have a lot of questions that they should consider since Twitter is designed for individuals:

• Do you set up a Twitter account with your official brand name or an employee spokesman?
• Great naming conventions by Dell (RichardatDELL) and Zappos (Zappos_Alfred) let customers know that their companies have a human face.
• Another best practice: Zappos uses a page on their website to let customers know all of the "official" company Tweeters.
• What are your goals and objectives for Twitter?
• Who speaks for your brand?
  
• Which department manages the Twitter account: Marketing, PR, Customer Service, Sales?
  
• Is there a Twitter editorial policy?
• How often do you send links to your website?
  
• Do tweets comply with SEC and SOX regulations?
• How do you protect against your brandjacking?
• If you are not ready to be on Twitter, do you Twittersqat your company name?
• Who do you follow?
• Do you follow back those that follow you?
• How often do you promote the brand in your tweets?
• Do you offer unique coupons to Twitter?
• How do you track those?  And what is success?
• Do you have a policy or guidelines for employees who tweet?
• Whose account is it?
• Must employees include the company in their bio?
• Which department enforces the policy?
• How do you bridge the line between being "big brother" and protecting the brand?
  

These are just a few concerns that companies should consider as they join the community.  I am sure there are many more.  And like all things Twitter, there is no hard and fast rule or right answer. It must feel right based on the objectives and culture of the company.  What else should brands consider as they get active on Twitter? 

Twitter Magic

Tonight while playing around on Twitter, I noticed an interesting tweet from Guy Kawasaki:

 

I didn't pay much attention honestly.  I thought maybe Guy had a heavy fetish or it was related to the lovely hat and boa set he is now wearing in his Twitter avatar. 11 minutes and 25 answers to Guy's question later, I saw this tweet from Guy:

 

Obviously, this is great Word of Mouth Marketing for Oriental Trading.  But even better, I know the Oriental VP of Marketing,  Neal Patrick. Unfortunately, Neal doesn't use Twitter nor does his company.  However, I have a feeling that will change soon.  So I connected Guy with Neal on Facebook and sent Guy Neal's email address.  Hopefully, they can help each other out.  More importantly, we saw the magic of the Twitter community with our loosely joined networks.

Now Guy, I do know a great little blog about Twitter that would be an awesome addition to Alltop! What do you think?

More on brands that get it

I've written a few times on brands that get Twitter:

• last week talking about Scott Monty and Ford
• Then on July 18, some innovative ways that HP was using Twitter at an event
• And on July 13, an article outlining best practices of brands that get it showing a video of Amy Worley

Since then, much has been written about brands that get it:

• Zena Weist gave great advice to companies on how to execute their Twitter strategy
• Jeremiah Owyang told Exxon how to use Twitter
• Shel Holtz wrote about how Southwest Air has used Twitter to announce a contest
• Ann Handley created a post about the number of brands on Twitter.
  
• And tonight, Rodney Rumford wrote about 25 startups using Twitter to help their businesses gain traction
• as well as 33 brands that suck on Twitter.

You can find more articles about brands on Twitter and best practices from my delicious tags.

So for all you brands out there, we've teed it up for you, told you how to do it the right way, and the wrong way.  It's up to you!

Twitter's impact on big brands

Scott Monty wrote about his first big assignment, as Ford's Social Media Czar on his blog today.  Tomorrow is 2009 Model Year Media day, and as we've come to expect from Mr. Monty, he has come up with some innovative ideas. Monty has invited a bunch of bloggers to the event so that they can get the inside scoop on the new cars and write about them for their communities.  So far, nothing new, I know.  But he's not inviting just the car bloggers. Don't worry, they are going.  But so are alot of lifestyle bloggers, people interested in areas like technology, environmental issues, family and luxury. The big Ford event will include:

• Melanie Notkin of SavvyAuntie
• Aaron Brazell of Technosailor
• Erin Kotecki Vest of Queen of Spain
• Ken Burbary of Web Business
• Yvonne DiVita of LipSticking

 I'm sure you recognize these people as they are all very prominent on Twitter. I'm not sure if Scott Monty met these bloggers on Twitter, but I do know that his relationships with each of them was strengthened by Twitter. So based on the relationships that we make on Twitter, we can have an impact on big brands.  Bravo and best of luck! Well done, Scott Monty!

These companies get it!

Recently after seeing a proliferation of spammers join Twitter, I wrote about Identifying unscrupulous twitterers and some ways to protect yourself from them. Unfortunately, during my research, I found many companies that exhibited the same behavior.  Twitter is a conversational tool that enables community of like minded people and fans.  However, many brands just see twitter as another channel for broadcasting their campaigns and pushing the message out. A simple monologue,hawking the latest item on sale or “cool ad”.  I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. Who is doing this?  Unfortunately, there is a long list.  Many well respected companies, large and small.  Companies like Amazon, Mountain Dew, Cruise West, and Wine Enthusiast.

Twitter provides companies with direct contact and engagement with their customers. On Twitter, brands can engage with their customers to learn what they like and what doesn’t work for them. Conversations happen on twitter and the smart companies are talking to their customers in a dialogue.

So which companies “get it” and are having conversations with their customers? Of course, there are the famous Twitter case studies about Dell, HR Block, Comcast, and Zappos.  We all know, love them and talk about them to prove that Twitter is a viable business channel that fosters deeper engagement and evangelism with our customers. The YouTube interview below between two Twitter friends, Rodney Rumford and Amy Worley of HR Block really illustrates the benefit and value of true conversations on Twitter.

In addition to these well known case studies, there are many other large and small companies that “get Twitter” and are having relationships with their customers. Saul Colt of FreshBooks uses twitter to reach out to his customers, not only for customer support and development of new features, but to plan tweetups with his customers whenever he travels. He listens for freelancers with billing problems and then he engages them. Intel has a number of employees on Twitter led by prolific twitterer Josh Bancroft as well as many product groups that engage in conversations with customers everyday.  And then there is Melanie Notkin, who just launched her company, Savvy Auntie, and has been using twitter and other social media for several months to inform customers, the press, and other interested parties about her underserved community and her solutions.  As a result, SavvyAuntie has jumped out of the gate with a successful launch that few companies have experienced.

So what are the best practices of all of these great companies using Twitter?

• They don’t push their message.
• They focus on the conversations by inviting, engaging, cheering and helping their customers.
• They listen for the relevant conversations and then try to be helpful.
• Their employees all speak in their own voice and personality.
• They have more than 1 twitter account, usually a corporate account but also individual accounts.
• And most of all, they are responsive.

Now if your company is thinking about joining Twitter (and you should), take some notes and learn from some of the good guys above.

Will Twitter become a nightmare for companies ?

Companies have to keep an eye on what's happening on the Internet regarding the image and the reputation of the companies and their products and services. With the arrival of Twitter, a site allowing people to publish short text messages, new challenges lie ahead for online repuration management.

Currently the total number of short messages published on Twitter is estimated at 6 million (according to John Kottke). A distinction has to be made between public messages, open to everyone, and private messages, exchanged between registered users directly or from private accounts. According to the weekly statistics published by Twitterment, over 150.000 new public Twitter messages are published every day.



>>> How can I search if the company I represent is being talked about on Twitter ?

Twitter does not offer possiblities to search the Twitosphere. Google has currently indexed over 700.000 pages from twitter.com. Other mainstream search engines (e.g. Live.com or Yahoo) have indexed fewer pages. Blogsearch engines such as Technorati do not seem very active regarding indexing Twitter messages. Different initiatives have been started in the Twitter area. Most of these initiatives focus on creating and reading messages. Luckily for people concerned with reputation management, a few initiatives allow to search the Twitosphere. At this moment the largest index of Twitter messages can be found at Twitterment. As of today, Twitterment has indexed 1,2 million Twitter messages. Other buzz tracking tools for the Twitosphere can be found in a previous post on this blog. Most of these buzz tracking tools have only a limited memory of a couple of days.

>>> How can I detect if there are links from Twitter messages to the site(s) of the company I represent ?

Because Twitter messages are restricted to 140 characters, URLs are very often replaced by short URLs generated by URL shortening services such as TinyURL. URL shortening services generate shorter URLs, freeing up characters for other content. The disadvantage is that it is not clear for a reader to which site a short URL is pointing to. If a webmaster of a company website detects incoming web traffic from twitter.com, it is almost impossible to detect from which specific Twitter messages the visitors are coming from, especially if a short URL is used. If the reference is made from a private message between two users or from messages from a private account, it is definitely impossible to retrace the message. Search engines such as Google offer the possibility to search for links (link:mycompany.com). Because the links are disguised as short URLs, these seach engines will not be of great help in finding links from Twitter messages.

I have the impression that tools for online reputation management for the twitosphere are still lacking or are immature. Hopefully companies will find solutions for the challenges mentioned above.