@twitter handle – are you in the 30 minute response league?

English: jacket cover of Dominate your market with Twitter – UK edition (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Does you company have a dedicated and real time twitter handle for service to your customers? Be it for your product or service or promotion?

Well, if your answer is yes, then you are in a special 23% league! Yes. As per a survey by simplymeasuredthat’s the percentage of companies which have a service-handle on twitter!

But whats the point if you have a handle, and take eons to respond to your customers? Today, with social media at the touch of a mobile screen 24/7, every minute of delay in your response is adding up to the dissonance in the customer’s mind.

In the same survey, not many of those 23% companies responded to the tweets coming in, within 30 minutes!

And that is a big big fail!

So, have a service twitter handle only if you man it real-time and 24/7/365.

Else, don’t have one. Period.

Does your organisation have the soc-med ecosystem to pass the 30 minute response test?

If you say YES, you are in the 30-minute response league.

Related articles

• Top Brands Using Twitter for Customer Support (marketingprofs.com)
• Report: 23% Of Top Brands Have A Separate Twitter Account For Customer Service (marketingland.com)
• How to Handle a “Wine-er” on Social Media (wineglassmarketing.com)
• Social Customer Service Lessons from 280 Tweets Over 26 Days (radian6.com)

Social media.. do you need a specialist?

Image via CrunchBase

Although the word social media is being used in a broad sense, the question is more in the context of the 140 character powerhouse of information, Twitter!

Globally, and closer home too, celebrities and the common man alike have taken to tweeting as not just a habit, but a must do. The same can be extended to posts and views across the social space.

In the case of celebrities, even just a few tweets gets them thousands of followers. Along with that comes loads of scrutiny both by the media, and their followers/critics.

Celebrities use their status sometimes to a great advantage; at the same time, some of them tend to shoot them in their own legs by their over enthusiasm, and also in their bit of recklessness or call it packed emotions. In a nation of a billion views on any topic in the universe that is India, such reckless tweets land the celebrities into controversies, and at times land them in litigation.

There are a whole bunch of celebrities who use ghost tweeters, with their views on issues be known, and the actual time and line of tweeting is decided by the tweeter who happens to be a specialist in communication. In such cases, the specialist adds in a sense of context, and takes care to see that the sensitivities are not hurt, in issues of import.

Such specialized intervention and management ought to be seen in the light of the power of social to amplify, interpret, at times misinterpret what is said – all this in the speed of light (or call in the speed of the net!)

While there can be questions on whether such a tendency to specialist manage or agency manage social media is right, ethical, and stands for authenticity, there can be no doubt that when there is so much rapt attention to every single tweet and word in the tweet uttered (or feed/post in any social post), a specialist intervention in managing such social media could be handy.

As communications outreach professional, what are your thoughts to share?

Related articles

• 8 Indispensible Tools to Improve Your Social Media Efficiency (businessesgrow.com)
• How to Get the Most from Your Social Media Manager (socialmediatoday.com)
• Growth of a Social Media Team (blogsouthwest.com)
• Social media wills (news4jax.com)