Why we Twitter, when we Tweet
- Posted August 19th, 2008
- Filed under: Customer Service, How We Do It, Social Media
For more and more businesses, Twitter, the instant message service, is becoming an important part of their communication efforts. Twitter is being used both by bigger companies like Zappos, Dell, Comcast and smaller start-ups like Get Satisfaction (a customer feedback forum) and, well, us!
Because I’ve become such a Twitter fan, I thought I’d write why BatchBlue uses Twitter and what we tend to “tweet” about (i.e. post) in hopes that you might find some ideas for your business.
First, if you’re not entirely sure what Twitter is, you might want to check out the Social Media for Small Business paper that Adam and I wrote a while back ago. It gives a good overview of the application and some specific ways a small business owner might use it.
Here’s how BatchBlue is using Twitter:
- To let customers know about planned BatchBook outages. We always tweet when we are pushing code, and when we’re back up again.
- In the unlikely event of an unplanned outage, we’ve got a web page that directs people to our Twitter site so that we can communicate with our users.
- To provide another communication channel for our customers. At BatchBlue, we are all about what our customers have to say. This gives folks an opportunity to chat with us directly, should they wish to.
- To make announcements about the company and staff
- To request feedback about ideas or product development
- To point people to our blog posts
- To share a little bit more about who we are as a company with the world
In addition to our @batchblue Twitter account, most BatchBluers also have personal Twitter accounts. Sometimes the line does get blurred between what is us personally and what is our company. But to paraphrase Saul Colt, our friend and Head of Magic at Freshbooks (from Inc. magazine no less!), loving your customers isn’t a campaign, it’s a lifestyle.
We are open and honest in the way we communicate because that’s the kind of people we are. I think who we are as a company and on Twitter reflects that pretty well. Feel free to follow us on Twitter (@batchblue) and let us know how you think we’re doing.
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I trust you would not have reservations if I placed a part of this on my univeristy blog?
Hi Jaqueline – that’s fine (with attribution and link of course!) Glad you found it helpful.