Groundswell Reading Reflection Ch. 7-10

Tapping with the groundswell Twitter






Twitter is one of the most powerful groundswell social media. It lets us listen, talk, energize, support, and embrace customers effectively. If you know how to use Twitter very well, your brand will reach to many people promptly.



Then how should we do with Twitter?

First of all, you should have a clear objective before you make an account with Twitter. Like groundswell have been telling us that we always need to know our objectives, otherwise it would end up with failing.


1. Lock up your handle


   You need to handle Twitter by yourself. Don't let another people pretend your company. You can set up a verified account on Twitter so that people can figure out if it is a real account or not.



2. Listen first


   Before you start tweeting, you should know what people are talking about your brand/ product.



3. Be ready to support people

  Your follower would be anticipating for your support. Especially, angry customers need your help. So have a technical group and be supportive for your customers.




4. Follow others


   Follow your followers. It gives you more opportunity to receive the customers voices from "direct message." Also, it might get followers excited like "Subway follows me!"





5. Be ready for a crisis


   If some accidents happen, you need to post to follow up them for your followers. They are expecting you to inform them, so you have to be responsible. Make a plan for a crisis, and also be able to link to official statements.











6. Respond, retweet, and link


   Reacting to tweets from followers. Response to what follower talk about your products, retweet if they tweet something interesting, and links to your website or videos. But avoid posting the same response because we can review all the tweets from the tweet-stream.
   


7. Staff it


    Be prepare people for Twitter as a job. As groundswell says,

"Twitter needs to be somebody's job." 

No matter they are marketers, PR practitioners, or other support people, they need to work for twitter as a job.



8. Check with legal and regulatory staff

   Groundswell says,

"Twitter is public speech."

You have to be care full if your posts would be inappropriate or not.



9. Having gathered a following, don't waste it!

   Once you have many followers for your temporary twitter account (ex. seasonal events, or products), you should lead all of them to other accounts (if you have a main account for your company/products). You might have already built their interests in your products. Do not waste them!!




This is actually one of the great examples of "Follow others."

Twitter Official Page of Chubu Int'l Airport
(Again, sorry this is written in Japanese. )

One of the Japanese airports, Chubu Int' Airport (@Centrairairport), follows all of their followers.  They actually talk and listen to them and give followers advises about shops, and restaurants in the airport when they ask (tweet) Centrair account like "what can we eat for lunch at the airport?" and then, Centrair answers the question like "we have a seafood restaurant, sushi place, and noodle booth." So they actually communicate with followers. Also, they often keep us updated about traffic and train information, so that people can make plans for a time to leave.


This is the only company that follows me on Twitter even though I followed more than a hundred companies. I realized that not many companies followed back  their follow back. So they might just  watch on Twitter and be trying to know what people talk about on Twitter.



As I already mentioned above, Twitter is the most simplest and influential social media. If you use Twitter well, you can talk, listen, energize, support, and embrace them easily. Let's try and practice on your private Twitter account. If you can satisfy your own followers, you will be able to engage to your customers.