Tweepforce Twitter Roundup brings together all stories related to Twitter applications and platform updates and how these developments can help businesses to leverage this platform for business and product development.
Brands maintain multiple Twitter Accounts
Brandwatch analyses how over 250 leading brands are using Twitter. This includes how many accounts a brand maintains on Twitter. They found that:
•The number of brands using multiple Twitter accounts has increased from 7% to 63% over the last three years.
•In 2012, 35% of brands used multiple accounts, while the majority had just one.
•A common use of multiple accounts is to have one that allows for engagement – mostly in the form of customer service – and another for offers and company news.
•Dell has the most Twitter accounts (44), each of them covering a different department.
Takeaway for businesses:
Small businesses can also take a leaf out of the growing popularity of multiple accounts among big brands, to cater to various audiences in a distinct way. However, small businesses with limited resources might have to use tools like Hootsuite and Buffer to make sure all accounts are synced and managed properly, as managing multiple accounts can be very time consuming and costly.
Twitter Finding New ways to Suggest Who to Follow!
Recently, Twitter launched a mysterious account called “Magic Recs”. This account delivers real time, tailor-made recommendations for users and content via direct message. Its foundation is straight forward: Twitter users that follow “Magic Recs” receive random direct messages that highlight accounts that people in your Twitter network have recently started following.
Recommend @magicrecs. A better "who to follow" via DM.
— Gina Trapani (@ginatrapani) August 3, 2013
Takeaway for businesses:
Magic Recs is a unique initiative to discover relevant new Twitter accounts and tweets, beyond Twitter’s current features such as on site/application suggestions and an email newsletter. Businesses must be aware of, and make use of, innovations like “Magic Recs”, to ensure that they keep on top of Twitter advancements to grow their follower base, especially when it is free.
Secrete Behind Twitter Trending Topics
To be featured in Twitter trending is the ultimate aim for any marketer to get some real traction on Twitter, and knowing the popularity of Twitter trends, the company has also launched its most expensive advertising product so far: Promoted Trends.
According to estimates, Promoted Trends cost from around $100k/month, so it is far out of reach of small and medium-sized businesses. However Cision Media has done some recent analysis of both global and local trends and given some insight into the logic of trending topics.
Takeaway for business for Trending Topics:
1.Choose a non-peak times, like early morning, when people aren’t tweeting along to TV programmes.
2.Use a new hashtag so that its rise is more pronounced.
3.Hit as wide an audience as possible in a limited time – the sharper the peak, the more chance you have of trending.
Twitter Advertising has Made Customer Service Very Public and Real Time
Annoyed with the way British Airways was tackling the issue of his father’s lost luggage, businessman Hasan Syed decided to shout about it on Twitter. But rather than just a normal status update, Hasan bought a promoted tweet. Six hours after the tweet went live, it was picked up by technology blog Mashable and then read by thousands of Twitter users, retweeted and commented on.
What is taking @British_Airways customer service so long? They've had over a day to figure this out.
— º¿º (@HVSVN) September 3, 2013
But BA took another four hours to react with the following message:
“Sorry for the delay in responding, our Twitter feed is open 09:00-17:00 GMT. Please DM [direct message] your baggage ref and we’ll look into this.”
In other words, for British Airways the damage was done as this tweet was also picked up from BBC to CNN, and reached a huge audience.
Takeaway for Businesses:
1. The good news is that Twitter has made customer service real time and a two-way stream, but if requests and queries are not dealt with promptly, brands can incur substantial reputation damage.
2. Use Twitter advance search or tracking tools to ensure relevant tweets are picked up as soon as they go live, so that appropriate action can be taken.
3. Identify Twitter as one of the preferred mediums of customer management, so that queries made on this can be dealt as soon as possible.
