In the age of distraction, grabbing customer attention is a
premium. Microblogging websites such as Twitter are a powerful
broadcast medium. The content reaches out to a large audience and
with less content, it grabs customer attention quickly. The various
uses of Microblogging websites are:
- Build brand awareness - Companies can reach out to a larger
audience thru Microblogging and build awareness about the brand,
its products, and uses.
- Generate revenue (Sell products) - Some companies use Twitter
to promote and sell their products. A link to buy option is shared
in the Microblogged content which routes people to the buy page on
product's website.
- Customer support - A lot of companies handle their customer
support or complaint thru websites such as Twitter. Users can tweet
their complaints tagging the company page and a quick resolution is
provided to their problem.
- Customer feedback - Companies can seek direct customer feedback
thru Microblogging websites or administer surveys that reach out to
a larger audience. The audience can consist of users and non-users
as well which could also reveal why non-users of company products
do not consider buying it.
- Customer alerts - Some companies use microblogging websites to
share promotional alerts to trigger buying of the company product.
Also, some general alerts related to product safety are issued thru
the microblogging websites.
Twitter is a popular microblogging tool which can be used by
companies to build a strong brand following the below steps:
- Build a Twitter account - The first steps involve stamping your
presence on Twitter with a brand page with appropriate name and
profile picture (logo) which is well recognized by the customers.
The brand page must share profile information which could include
brand history, achievements, products etc. As a brand, we need to
start following a few people and hope some of them follow us back.
Generally, we need to profile people with a lot of followers who
use our products and follow them.
- Start Tweeting - The next step is to build content and publish
on Twitter in line with the brand objectives. The various
objectives could be:
- Brand awareness - Content that shares information about
products, their usage, history of the brand, new product launches
etc. Twitter is a powerful tool to reach a large audience all at
once. Also, companies build hashtags which if copied by the Twitter
user could make the Tweet go viral
- Promotional alerts - Many brands use Twitter to send out
promotional alerts and offers. This information triggers the buying
instinct within a lot of Twitter users.
- Generate Sales - Certain tweets sent out by brands have product
information and link on how to buy. Many people on twitter get this
information all at once and maybe pushed instinctively to buy the
product.
- Seek customer
feedback - Twitter is a good medium to capture solicited and
unsolicited feedback. Customer sentiments can be analyzed thru
Tweets related to product or experience with the brand. Some
customers have a habit of Tweeting after using a new product and
their experience. By analyzing such Tweets a brand can get
information about what customer liked or disliked. Further,
solicited feedback can be captured by trigerring traditional
surveys thru Twitter.
- Presence Customer service thru Twitter - Brands are appreciated
if they respond to customer tweets and resolve customer complaints
quickly. Twitter is an important place to show your excellent
customer service. Once a customer complaint is received thru a
customer Tweet, efforts must be made to resolve it quickly and
respond back to the customer. Certain complaint tweets can generate
bad publicity for the brand and it is important to resolve them
before matters get worse or other people start re-tweeting the
customer complaint.