8. 8
How are companies using Twitter
EXTERNAL
• Customer service
• News, blog updates
• Branding, promotion,
marketing
• PR, media relations
• Finding leads,
prospects
• Extending touchpoints
• Community building
• Networking, tweetups
• Direct sales
• Recruitment
• Driving traffic to website
INTERNAL
• Connecting sales teams
• Coordinating
decentralized teams
• Event planning
• Project status and
updating staff, teams
• Employee support
• Mentoring
• Problem-solving
• Purely social
10. 10
Twitter: Best practices
• Listen: Follow popular tweeters first
• Share: Find great stuff to share
• Be authentic
• Be active! No one is interested if your last
tweet was from several months ago
• Don’t hard sell: If you are plugging your own
product, service, event, cause, say so.
Preface with “Shameless plug…”
• Preface a personal opinion with IMHO, or “My
personal opinion is…”
11. 11
Scott Monty, Ford Motor Company
Head of social media, Ford
http://www.scottmonty.com
http://twitter.com/scottmonty
1. Always shows gratitude
2. Constantly corrects misinformation
3. Encourage conversation
12. 12
Frank Eliason, Citi, formerly of Comcast
SVP of Social, Citi
http://www.frankeliason.com
http://twitter.com/askciti
Formerly @comcastcares
4. Problem solver: Fields customer
support issues, re-directs to right person
5. Always helpful and adding value
13. 13
Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic
Director, Social Media, Mayo
http://tinyurl.com/smugu
http://twitter.com/leeaase
http://twitter.com/mayoclinic
6. Health tips
7. Sharing patient, inspiring stories
8. Promoting radio shows, webcasts
14. 14
“People relate to people,
not companies,”
Tony Hsieh, Zappos.com,
Zappos.com: Shoevangelism
15. 15
Case study: Zappos.com
• Free shipping, a 24/7 open call center, and 365-
day return policy.
• Turned an e-commerce shoe site into a US$1B
business in 10 years. Sold to Amazon.com
• Obsession with customer service, little
advertising, organic word-of-mouth
recommendations.
• Five weeks of employee training on culture,
core values, customer service. Uses Twitter as
communications channel.
19. 19
Twitter 101
1. A tweet is 140 characters long
2. RT: re-tweet other tweets you think are worth
repeating,
3. @username: used to reply to someone or
engage in a conversation or as a hat tip. This
a public tweet everyone can see. Eg:
@username message
4. dm or d followed by space, then name of
person eg: d username message OR click
Messages (next to Profile). You can send
private message to someone only if they
follow you.
20. 20
Twitter 101: Using #hashtags
5. The Hash Tag aka Pound Symbol [#] is
used to categorize tweets into topics,
events, trends.Hashtags are the Twitter
equivalent of keywords. eg: #socialmedia
6. Search specific hashtags and save those
searches for future reference.
7. Tip: Use a unique hashtag to promote a
contests, event or product eg:
#contest123 (make sure no one is using
it first)
8. #followfriday or #ff is used by a majority
to spotlight individuals they consider
worth following, not necessarily on Friday
21. 21
Short links
• Helps reduce character space. Became
popular with rise of Twitter
• Popular services: tinyurl.com, bit.ly
• Others: is.gd, snipurl.com, tr.im
• When posting a link, use Topsy.com to find
out how popular/timely the link already is
and whether your friends have already
tweeted/posted it.
• Bit.ly provides transparent stats: Add + sign
at the end of shortlink eg: bit.ly/123456+
1. 2.
23. 23
Sample Twitter Accts/Lists
• Media on Twitter: http://www.mediaontwitter.com
• Journalists on Twitter: http://muckrack.com
• List of Malaysian journalists:
http://twitter.com/trinetizen/malaysian-journalists
• List of Malaysian media:
http://twitter.com/trinetizen/malaysian-media
• List of Malaysian politicians:
http://twitter.com/trinetizen/malaysian-politicians
• List of Malaysian celebs:
http://twitter.com/trinetizen/malaysian-celebs
• List of Malaysian brands:
http://twitter.com/trinetizen/malaysian-brands
24. 24
Useful Twitter apps
• Twitter clients: Tweetdeck, Seesmic,
Ubersocial, Hootsuite, Twitterrific, Twhirl
• TweetAlarm, Twilert: Put in a keyword and
get emails when others tweet it.
• Twellow: Search for tweeple
• Twitpic, Lockerz, Instagram: Post photos
• Yfrog, Twitvid: Post videos
• Twapperkeeper: Archives tweets
• Tweetstats: Graphs your stats
• Spy: http://spy.appspot.com/
26. 26
Exercise: Twitter
• Go to Twitter (set up account, if you don’t
already have one)
• Find a news release from your site to tweet
• Make a shortlink using bit.ly of that story link
• Create 140-character tweet and add the
short link
• Find people to follow
• Create a list
• Re-tweet another person’s tweet
• Post a photo using Twitpic
28. 28
•Raised RM11,000 + two desktop PCs
+ Broadband
•Destiny Starting Point, a home Klang
29. 29
Ashton Kutcher vs CNN
@aplusk beats @cnnbrk to 1m followers, then donates
US$100,000 to buy 10,000 nets for ‘Malaria No More’, a
nonprofit which wants to end malaria deaths in Africa by 2015.
No malaria video
30. 30
Celebs using Twitter
to promote their causes
http://twitter.com/Jamie_Oliver
http://twitter.com/aplusk
http://twitter.com/RyanSeacrest
http://twitter.com/oprah
http://twitter.com/QueenRania
http://twitter.com/JimCarrey
http://twitter.com/BillGates
http://twitter.com/charlizeafrica
List: celebritytweet.com
31. 31
“In the past you were what you owned.
Now you are what you share,”
Charles Leadbeater
Notes de l'éditeur
Pepsi Ad appears in German magazine of “last calorie suicide” found to be insensitive by Tweeters and was immediately killed.
Botanicalls allows plant to send tweets to owner when it is running low on moisture. US$99.99 for the kit.
Zappos is a company that believes in a good customer experience and that repeat customers are the key to success.
Zappos customers become evangelists of the brand.
I wrote Tony Hsieh an email after he said he would send anyone the Zappos Culture Book, then tweeted about it and received immediate reply from @Zappos_Service and three days later the UPS guy showed up outside my house in Malaysia. It arrived in 72 hours all the way from Vegas. Cool.
Twestivals are events run via Twitter. In September 2008, a group of Twitterers based in London UK decided to organise an event where the local Twitter community could socialize offline; meet the faces behind the avatars, enjoy some entertainment, have a few drinks and tie this in with a food drive and fundraising effort for a local homeless charity. The bulk of the event was organized in under two weeks, via Twitter and utilized the talents and financial support of the local Twittersphere to make this happen. Around the world similar stories started appearing of local Twitter communities coming together and taking action for a great cause. Twestival was born out of the idea that if cities were able to collaborate on an international scale, but working from a local level, it could have a spectacular impact. By rallying together globally, under short timescales, for a single aim on the same day, the Twestival hopes to bring awareness to this global crisis.
First Malaysian twestival was held at Mist Club, Bangsar, Sept 12, 2009. They raised RM11k and had two PCs with broadband connection donated to Destiny Starting Point a home for delinquent boys in Klang. Various sponsors such as Air Asia, Digi, Tiger, 1901 Hotdogs, Crocs, GSC, Cupcake Chic and NZ Natural Ice Cream.