testing

1. http://www.salesforce.com/ap/industries/retail/
http://outsideinnovation.blogs.com/pseybold/topiccustomer_experience/pa
ge/2/
Why Twitter Rules (and What to Do About It)
In the past few months, the Twitter phenomenon has reached epic proportions.
Personally, I chalk this up to the malaise that is gripping us all as we struggle to
make sense of both the economic crisis and the political seismic shifts that are
upon us. Not content to consume news media and blogs, we now all want to
make sense of it, to share our observations, and most of all to connect. So this
odd 140-character microblogging platform, known as Twitter, has ballooned in
importance. In the last week, the Financial Times published a full-page article
about Twitter. U.S. Congresspeople tweeted during Obama’s speech to the
joint houses of Congress, and Keith Olbermann’s CountDown described
theCongressional "Twits tweeting," and John Stewart ran a great spoof on
the new Congressional pastime of tweeting. (The software is called Twitter;
the short messages you send are called “tweets.” And yes, anyone who IS
anyone is doing it.) The best way to get up to speed on Twitter in my opinion is
to use the Twitter How To's and links at Mashable. Feel free to drop me a note.
My twitter handle is pattyinboothbay.
How Should Your Company Deal with Twitter?
No matter what your personal opinion is about this phenomenon/fad, you
should take note about how your customers and prospects are using Twitter
and how your company should be engaging with them using this popular tool.
1. Best Use of Twitter: Real-Time Customer Support. The best way to win the
hearts and minds of customers and prospects is to set up a twitter search filter
on your company’s and product’s name(s) and to ensure that your customer
support organization is tracking and responding to these tweets in real time.
Oddly enough, when someone is stuck in line at an airport, having trouble with
your Web site, or having difficulty using your product, they are highly likely to
tweet about it (before they send you an email or call your support line or while
they’re doing so). It’s an easy way for people to vent frustration and reach out
to the world. If your customer support team responds quickly, both with a
public tweet (so others will know you’re listening) and with a Direct Message to

2. offer personal assistance, you will not only solve that customer’s issue but have
that positive experience re-tweeted. Here are a couple of good examples:
• Andybeal: Ordered from Office Depot for the first time—won’t use them
again. No delivery Thurs—too busy to deliver. Friday? No explanation & no
package
• edwinaoki: Comcast outage. Can't get to anything east of Denver. They say
"they hope to have it fixed by 8pm". That's 13 hours!
• TESFox: I have to say, Comcast is doing an excellent job of being there for
customer service. Hats off for @comcastcares and the live chat team!
2. Planning and Managing Events. Whatever event you’re planning—whether
it’s a local gathering of wine connoisseurs, a training class, a big user
conference or a new product launch, Twitter should be part of your pre-,
during and post-event communications plan. You can create a buzz before the
event and encourage participants to tweet their notes, impressions and
commentary during the event, and buzz after the event. You can make it easy
for groupies and participants to retweet by providing hashtags (#ourevent) that
they can embed in each tweet to make it easy to filter and search.
• gavangibson: #UBL Saul Kaplan: innovation=better way to deliver value to
customer; zappo.com, virgin
• UserAdvocate: So far #drupalcon:solr is a breath of fresh air. Looking
forward to see where he's going with his take on information architecture
• RobynGreenspan: RT @HSMAmericas #WIF09 Patricia Seybold Confirms as
Featured Blogger at the World Innovation Forumhttp://tinyurl.com/abbrxy
3. New Product Launches. Twitter is a great way to get the word out in
seductive and non-intrusive ways about upcoming new products or services.
Most companies offer a limited number of “beta invites” via Twitter. These
become coveted and people start asking for them so they can be part of the in
crowd.
• aneel: rt @somic: CohesiveFT launches VPN-Cubed for EC2 - Build-your-own
[transatlantic] [on-demand] private network in cloud! http://bit.ly/xqUqa
• utopiah: @tonylucas a friend told me I should ask for a beta invite, since Im
curious about cloud computing services, here I tweet ;)
4. Customer Outreach and Gentle Evangelism. Many brand managers have
managed to find the perfect tone in their Tweets. They don’t barrage you with

3. blatant PR or marketing. They ask for reactions. They thank you when you DO
tweet about their products or brands. They float ideas. They engage with
people.
• angie1234p: @RockYourDay Morning Dave. Have I got news for you lol Molson
Canadian is on Twitter (@MolsonFerg) Thought you might find it interesting :)
[PBS: Fans notice your presence!]
• BlakeSunshine: @jessiecarp I work at National
Instruments onwww.ni.com/community- hope your semester is off to a great
start
5. Drive Traffic to Your Site, Blog, E-Store, YouTube. Apart from free give-
aways, twitterers don’t appreciate blatant product pitches. They’ll “unfollow”
you quickly. But we do love to pass around links to great funny videos, useful
commentary, insightful analysis, useful tips and tricks. Make sure that your
contributions include seductive links that people will value.
• artrox: RT @thebrandbuilder @alydesigns @peopledesign: '5 Lessons in
Business Innovation' http://tinyurl.com/bnwmvb(design around your customer)
[PBS: Note the ReTweet—being passed along—also the use of a “tinyurl” which
saves space]
• it_world: The cloud and the public sector - water and oil?: Public sector CIOs
should look to the leading cloud computing ..http://tinyurl.com/d7hmep
• QuadrilleKnits: we now have over 3,000 followers on
twitter..Quadrille_Books, QuadrilleFood, QuadrilleEco, QuadrilleHome, Student
Cook, Jewish_Princess etc!
• doingmedia: @christinawodtke Congrats on the 2nd edition of Information
Architecture: Blueprints for the Webhttp://ping.fm/Tlv8A
6. Monitor Your Brand/Reputation. Twitter is the least expensive and most
effective way to track your brand’s reputation online. You can just set up a
search filter, turn the feed into an RSS feed (so you can capture and analyze it
as it flies by) and then take actions to improve customer experience and/or
amplify the good vibes.
• tivogrrl: “Enjoyed seeing USAA at Mx 2009. They are a financial services
company that really gets customer service.”
• AdayVA: “@VistaPrint Thanks for ease of use and great customer service :)”

4. • richsharples: “Innovation loves a crisis, but only after customer have stepped
out from under their desks” - classic Jonathan Schwartz quote [PBS: Jonathan
Schwartz is the CEO of Sun—monitor execs’ names as well as company, brand
and product names]
• josephnasto: Wal-Mart Customer Finds Human Teeth in New
Wallet http://tinyurl.com/bt7zan
Analyzing Twitter Activity in an Integrated Web Analytics Platform
What if you are in charge of monitoring all search and social media activity
around your products and your brands and constantly tuning your brand’s SEO
and site merchandising? Ideally, you want an integrated approach for
monitoring, analyzing, and taking action on the searches, tweets, blog posts,
and buzz that’s swirling around your brand and your products. There are two
keys to success:
1. Put the responsibility to monitor, analyze, and take action in the hands of a
single coordinated team, don’t silo it across your firm’s PR, social media, e-
commerce, SEO and site search, product and promotion merchandising, and
customer support teams. Things move fast. You need to be able to get in front
of the customer parade, not behind it! It’s fine to have distributed
responsibilities for analyzing, tracking, and acting on customers’ buzz,
interactions, and activity, but you’ll want to function as a virtual team, and
ideally to use an integrated platform—one that lets you spot trends quickly and
take action quickly.
2. Provide your team with integrated tools that let you monitor and analyze
activity in real time across all of the different internal and external traffic
sources that you monitor—those you control and those you don’t control.
The good news is that the leading-edge search analytics and e-merchandising
platforms are embracing the leading edge social media trends.
Omniture Embraces Twitter
One of the top search analytics and e-merchandising platforms—the one used
by the majority of large brands—is Omniture. It’s good news that the Mercedes
Benz of e-commerce search and merchandising is moving with Porsche-like
agility to embrace the leading edge social media platform. In a Mashable blog
post, entitled: Omniture Adds Twitter Analytics for Brands, Jennifer Van Grove
writes:
“You could try one of these 10 reputation tracking tools, but Omniture’s
already powerful analytics product, SiteCatalyst, is now the first of its kind to

5. actually import Twitter data for better measurement of brand activity.
Omniture’s already powerful analytics product, SiteCatalyst, is now the first of
its kind to actually import Twitter data for better measurement of brand
activity.
Omniture currently boasts 5,100 clients—think AOL, Microsoft, Oracle, and eBay
—capturing more than 1 trillion online transactions per quarter, and is now
hoping to support their clients looking for Twitter insights on par with the
standard Web analytics they’re used to receiving.
After importing Twitter data into SiteCatalyst, Omniture customers will be able
to identify brand advocates and detractors, better acknowledge feature
requests from loyal users, categorize Twitterers as customers, vendors, or
employees, and get real-time alerts via email or SMS based on specified criteria
like spikes in brand mentions. Users will even be able to generate limitless
keyword reports - via tweet text scanning - to further segment, analyze, and
dissect Twitter-related brand data.”