‘Tweet to Compete’: That Says It All
by Joe McKendrick
My colleagues here at the FastForward site have been doing a great job of opening up the possibilities of social networking sites such as Twitter to business possibilities.
The mainstream IT media is also seeing the possibilities. Jason Meserve, writing in Network World, discusses how companies can leverage social networking sites to sell (your company or yourself), get answers, and keep up with trends.
Jason reports on the results of a Network World survey of 583 IT executives, and found adoption of the following three sites:
LinkedIn: 63%
Facebook 44%
Twitter 14%
While the numbers engaging in Twitter are still in the minority, Jason describes various ways it is being used. It makes sense — Twitter is fast and furious communication, no mincing of words. Say it fast and quick, no life stories — how businesslike is that?
The article describes how Comcast is active on Twitter, responding quickly to customer service or technical issues.
I recently had my own illuminating experience with customer service via Twitter. My email provider, iPower, had gone down for a couple of days because of a software bug. iPower did a good job of posting updates on their Website, but I felt like I was cut off from the universe (I could reach people through alternate accounts, but had no idea if someone was trying to reach me).
So I griped about it on Twitter.
Lo and behold, within the hour, someone from iPower had posted a response to me on Twitter, promising to look into my domain and help out. And it wasn’t long after that my email account came back online.
Very impressive. And a good use of a powerful emerging channel.
