Search Engine Strategies – Twittering for Business
Search Engine Strategies – Twittering for Business
Apologies but blogging slightly late on this session. Listening to this Mike Lewis talk about his experiences (good and bad) on using Twitter for business. Did you know that Delta Airlines has only one woman handling their multiple twitter accounts?
Personal Twitter Experience
Mike gave a personal example of how he was trying to get home to see his son and called Delta Airlines (during one of the biggest east coast snowstorms ever recorded). Mike managed to get ahold of someone who honestly said ‘listen I can help but, you’re going to be on the phone with me for at least half an hour’. He was successful and managed to get home to see his new son.
Mike immediately wrote a tweet (@bostonmike) praising Delta Airlines customer service and a day later a ‘thank-you’ tweet was given and said that ‘glad you made it back safely to your new son’. Now was this a fantastic bit of CRM management. No! The woman that handles the mutiple Delta Airlines twitter accounts researched Mike via Facebook and noticed the news about the new baby and posted the tweet on this information.
Customer Services by Twitter
Responding to customer services requests are becoming more and more common via Twitter. Business are starting to realise the cost benefits of not having to have someone answer the phone every time there is an issue and clearly FAQ pages (whether static or dynamic) are so yesterday that business need to seriously start looking at Twitter as a communication channel.
Take ASOS for example. Every staff member has a ASOS branded Twitter account and they are encouraged to tweet during business hours (would you see this in other industries? my answer is only some!). Does this openness / personification of a communications channel make their customer strategy better than someone that hasn’t adopted social media. The answer is probably not in the short term but, it is essential in developing relationships with your customers and then you get the benefits of repeat purchases.
“Costs three times more to get a new customer than keep an existing one!”
Customers of ASOS are regularly tweeting about their service, clothing and offers. This is an instant and two way communications channel. Vodafone’s recent faux-pas wasn’t brand destroying and to be honest was rather funny. However, do have processes in place to handle issues with bad posts.
Econsultancy has written a couple of blog posts about this:
08/02/10 – eConsultancy – The Horror, the horror of Vodafone’s social media balls-up
10/02/10 – eConsultancy – Vodafone and Twitter, can human error break down the corporate facade
I also found this slide deck that talks about how brands use Twitter.
Tracking social media – put it in buckets.
Social Yield
Is really against performance targets e.g. number of retweets, number of new followers. You can get these stats from tools like Google Analytics. Don’t be afraid to put a stake in the ground and set targets about increasing followers etc but, remember that this is not a ROI based metric.
Reporting to the board about an increase in the number of followers is not going to get you promoted but, add the understand behind the social media traffic e.g. influence, attribution.
Social Effect
Change in the number of retweets about our company
New Leads through Twitter
Twitter Results
How did Twitter increase sales?
What was the influence that Twitter had on any increase in sales?
ROI of Twitter
What is the increase in the traffic to your website? How many retweets and Where Traffic to the website, spreading content, inbdound links for seo, reduced service costs and sales & leads.
There are multiple ROI possibilities for an effective Twitter solution and it doesn’t necessarily mean that there is going to be an increase in the number of sales with a Twitter campaign code.
Firstly, as previously stated Twitter made have been an influence in the purchasing decision but, depending on whether you’re using a last touch attribution model or other you may not see this influence. What about those people that retweet
What about the cost savings in service costs? Managing customer service complaints, quelling disquiet in face of an angry customer? Well lets face it everyone is a little more ‘vocal’ when they feel that they aren’t speaking to a real person (face-to-face).
The presentation should be available and if it gets loaded to slideshare I’ll be sure to repost with a link.
Follow Up
Mike and the Delta Airlines Twitter Manager are now friends on Facebook. They are currently writing a case study together.
Related Links:
Mike Lewis – VP Marketing – Awareness Networks
50 Ideas of Using Twitter for Business
5 Top Tips for Twittering for Business
