Twitter and Facebook as an instant customer help line

Brian Lind (2011), the social media coordinator at the Association of College Unions International, thinks of Twitter and Facebook

as an instant customer help line, it‘s a great megaphone for customers to display satisfaction and dissatisfaction …

The first social networking sites were focused on bringing people together via chat rooms or forums to put in common ideas about different topics. As the social networks have developed, the people that use them have changed too: at the beginning social networking was principally used by young people as a way to communicate online with other people, but now people of all ages use it as an accessory for daily life.

Twitter is a microblogging site that provides its users write posts up to 140 characters. It also enables enterprises to spread their business through that 140 characters. Developing your company via Twitter means that you will increase your business’ market by having a more personal relationship with customers.

But bear in mind that, as a marketing campaign, takes time to show results and that quality tweets are essential to persuade consumers. To achieve that, you have to tweet about what matters to you, about what matters to your brand and converse with the followers and using hashtags and trends will facilitate the communication with the followers.

The first step is knowing how to write good quality tweets and to do that is helpful to elaborate a plan. According to the Social Media Examiner, a tweet plan is “a series of scheduled tweets used in conjunction with your real-time tweeting”.

A good tweet plan consists in eight steps, which are:

1. Choose the audience you are going to direct to
2. Your tweets should be divided in tweets related directly with the business and some others with your business real-life so you can catch your audience attention. And decide how many tweets you are going to post per day
3. Decide how much time will last the plan
4. Use keywords and hashtags related to your business
5. Use different tweet formats so that your Twitter does not become boring
6. Write unique tweets and limit them to 120 characters each, so that they become easier to retweet
7. Do not write all the tweets at the same time
8. Decide when to write your tweets. There are some tools that facilitate their schedule, as hootsuite.com

So, if you follow those steps your Twitter could really help growing your business. For example TwitterBusiness studied the case ofLe cique du Soleil. The company promotes itself in different websites but it wanted to create a more personal tie with the audience. As Lou D’Angeli, the director of marketing and PR said, “asking our Twitter followers about the show they have just seen brings back vivid memories for them. They not only love to talk about the amazing moments on stage but also how many performances they’ve seen”. Finally, the company earned followers in Twitter due to its promoted and tweets and promotions.

References:

• Lacy, Kyle Twitter marketing for dummies, Making everything easier (Ed.) Published in 2011. Retrieved November 29, 2011 http://books.google.es/books?id=bA4QM59FamEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Twitter+marketing+for+business&hl=es&ei=lffgTtP2MYmChQfD9In2BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Twitter%20marketing%20for%20business&f=false

• Parker,Catherine 301 Ways to use social media to boost your marketing, United States. Published in 2011. Retrieved November 29, 2011 http://books.google.es/books?id=OkteBOvmlpIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=301+Ways+to+use+social+media+to+boost+your+marketing&hl=es&ei=6ffgTsC-Jc24hAfL_KmhBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

• Brian Lind. In Delmarvanow: a gannett company. Retrieved 12:53, November 29, 2011    http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/20111127/NEWS01/111270306/Businesses-experience-benefits-using-social-media

• Lou D’Angeli. (2011, November 16). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 11:37, November 29, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lou_D%27Angeli&oldid=461003576