Mozilla are terrific at Twitter
Unlike many online and web 2.0 companies, Mozilla are great at providing customer service. Rather than calling an expensive phone line to get transfered twenty times before you finally receive help in broken English, or joining an online forum to talk to other disgruntled customers, FireFox users can simply use twitter to tweet about their problems. By monitoring mentions of FireFox on twitter, @firefox_answers can find out who needs help and offer it to them.
What a great way to use twitter and create brand ambassadors out of your customers! But despite this I wouldn’t recommend following @firefox_answers. I imagine it’s a bit like eavesdropping in a call centre. Instead just check your replies once you’ve asked a question.
Here are three other great ways for companies to use Twitter:
1. To speak to your customers
@pbloco uses Twitter well by entering into conversations with followers. The peanut butter manufacturer poses questions, replies to followers and occasionally hosts little competitions to win jars of P.B.Loco. If I won something over Twitter I know I’d certainly tweet and blog about it as well as tell my friends.
2. To provide news about your brand
@BarackObama uses Twitter well to keep followers up-to-date about where the presidential candidate is and what he’s doing, as well as how his campaign is progressing. What a great way to keep potential voters informed and position the candidate as a proactive change maker.
@innocentAGM2008 on the other hand used twitter badly by updating followers with little titbits about the company’s AGM. In theory it was a good idea, but chatty marketing doesn’t really work on Twitter. I don’t really care if the cake at the AGM tastes good or if there are 44 coats in the cloakroom.
3. To inform your readers
@guardiantech and @prweektech are great at using Twitter to keep their followers up to speed with technology news and generate hits to their websites. Though it can be annoying when @prweektech goes over 140 characters and you don’t receive the full message. If you are going to use twitter as a newsfeed you must be committed to doing it and not stop after 6 updates like
@bbctechfeatures who will have left their 250+ followers quite disappointed.
