With the growing popularity of Twitter as a business communications platform, companies have various decisions to make — including these: Does every tweet mentioning the firm’s name require a response? How should firms respond to positive tweets? To negative tweets? How fast should a firm post its response to a tweet?
LeadSift (“Our technology sifts through massive amounts of social data so brands can easily identify customers and engage with them in context.”) recently conducted an important research project on these topics:
“Is it better to answer an irate customer on Twitter, or take the conversation to E-mail? Should you include happy faces in your tweets, or keep them professional? There is no end to the questions that businesses have when developing their Twitter engagement strategy, so we decided to help. LeadSift examined over 10,000 randomly selected interactions from brands and small and medium-sized businesses on the LeadSift platform to see what works, and what doesn’t, when engaging with customers. Take a look at the following infographic for 10 research-backed ways to improve your Twitter customer engagement.”
And click the infographic to read a lot more.
I had an issue with an entertainment company regarding my VIP tickets to a concert they they were hosting. I tried calling them and they did not answer so I took to twitter. I was upset is the tweet was not worded in the nicest way and they responded telling me to message them my phone number and they will contact me. I think that way handled that situation very well because they called me and personally explained the situation without posting it for the whole world to see. I think that more companies should execute that same respect. I think that firms should handle positive tweets by thanking people for their positive energy. They do not have to respond to anyone but it does make People realize that they do care about their clients. The firm should respond to tweets in a timely fashion but they do not have to be glued to their sonically media all day when have more important things to do.
I believe that businesses should respond to tweets in funny ways that also solve the problems. With good customer service and comedy the the brands will likely become more popular and keep current customers
A company responding to an upset customer’s tweets has the tendency to cause the upset customer to stop posting negative tweets about the company. At least all the times I have seen it on my timeline, the upset customer ceased the negative tweeting. Responding to customers shows that the company is involved and listening to customer reviews to further improve their service and products.
I see all different companies on Twitter who respond to tweets at them, whether they are irate or kind tweets. When it comes to looking professional or not, it all depends on what kind of company it is. I constantly see Denny’s twitter on my timeline, whether they are replying to someone or even just posting a funny tweet that a friend of mine would retweet. I think twitter is a great platform for companies if they center it around a type of engine that customers can ask questions or even if customers just want to be entertained. When it comes to responding to tweets, any positive tweets can be responded to because it will bring a positive outlook on the company. If they respond to the negative tweets, it all depends on how they do it. “Fighting fire with fire” would definitely not be a great approach. But, if you were to either ignore the tweet or respond in a professional matter and look like the mature person, then all power to the company.
Companies should not respond to tweets on twitter unless it is a good comment, companies that try to resolve issues customers bring up usually make the issue worse by making it a public issue. I once had an issue with U.S Airways because they delayed my flight and made me stay in North Carolina, so i complain via twitter, they tried to help but it just made things worse for them because now a private issue became a public one, this is not good marketing for the company. It hurts the brand name associated with the company as well. In sum, a company should not reply unless there is a good comment coming from a consumer.
I follow Hirez, an up and coming gaming company which has developed a game called Smite. One of its promotions was receiving a god [character] skin by following the twitter page, but the skin was slow in being gifted in game (up to a week). This caused a wave of users responding to the official twitter page, causing a visible uproar on the twitter page, nothing the company quickly overcame, but still a problem that arose from a marketing campaign on social media.
Additionally, This article reminds me of a company that is attempting to further utilize web-based advertising, and one of the issues it had was choosing advertisements on youtube. reading the article, and having ocmpanies choose between putting an emoticon and not reminds me of this company’s dilemma in choosing different forms of youtube advertising, whether it be on the page, or embedded in the video itself.
This was an interesting read on how businesses (small, medium, and large) should respond on Twitter. The studies performed and stated in the article almost seem like a psychology and marketing team came together. The assessment that consumers are more likely to engage in a tweet that utilizes emoticons or uses the word “click” instead of “follow” seems like a psychological study. Almost if the mind when seeing these things believe they are more inviting and/or casual and in doing so, the consumer responds or follows. Then you see the use of a marketing strategy when stating that the male is more likely to respond and that putting a link 45% down on a tweet is more likely to be clicked. As anyone in the business world knows, your demographics are key and placing an item in text in a place where the eye can easily see it is crucial. After reading this article, I’m almost curious to know how much psychology has an influence in the marketing world.
That inforgraphic is very interesting. I found a lot of these statistics to be surprising. I didnt know that Men were more likely than women to be engaged by a response on twitter by a business. I was amazed that the people were able to find out how far in a response there should be an external link and how long after an original post should a company respond. It was refreshing to see what actions increased engagement and what decreased engagement. Social media presence is very important and doing things the right way on social media is very important. The whole point of Social Media is to increase your business hopefully. So you don’t want to do something on their that would actually bring your business down.
In my opinion, companies should not respond to tweets on twitter because it will encourage people to comment more than necessary. Some tweets are good and some are bad but the more responding will end up people just more caring about the response and it could hurt the brand in that people wont actually see what the company is tweeting about whether it is negative or positive.
What about a response that solves a problem?
This article is very insightful and all the tips it shares with us are very interesting. I can get a lot of fun but useful information from it, like ‘Punctuation marks like “?” and “!” increase engagement by 27%’. And also I have the same opinion as the article mentions about the way to respond your tweets. Positive responds would always be more acceptable and beneficial.
I think this is very interesting. Personally, if I take the time to tweet directly at a company, band, or celebrity I am definitely hoping for a reply. If I didn’t want a reply I would subtweet about them and leave out the tagging mark. Even if it’s a negative comment, I think that a response could quickly reverse a bad experience and also would show me as a consumer that the company actually cares. One time I tweeted at a band to see if their concert was still on and they never responded and that made me feel like I didn’t matter when really I had made a contribution to the band in exchange for a ticket to watch a concert! I think it’s important for companies to respond to tweets.
Michaela Cody; MKT 101 section 1
The company should very careful to decide how to respond the social media. one month ago, the Chinese beverage company Wanglaoji herbal tea play a joke about Chinese anti-Japanese hero-Shaoyun-Qiu on their social media Weibo. it is sparked massive protests against Wanglaoji on the Weibo. I think a company should not play a joke or discuss the political issue on the internet, it is very danger to the company.