A Tale of Two Tweets

Over the last year, I’ve been amazed by the number of companies jumping on Facebook and Twitter or some other social network in attempt to drive “social media strategy.” It’s no secret that with the pervasive nature of social media, companies need to consider how best to engage in these technologies, but there are definitely organizations that get it… and those that don’t.

Here are two personal experiences that help illustrate my point.

Experience #1

My family recently bought a new house and moved across the valley. Before making the move we checked with our utility and service providers to make sure that we could transfer our current services without incurring any type of fees. After working everything out we were assured that everything should be set and that we would see a transfer in our services without so much as a hiccup.

Of course I didn’t really expect that to happen, but it was a nice gesture.

After the move I wasn’t surprised when our first bill came and saw that Big Cable had not only overcharged us for our services, they included transfer fees and double billed us for our last month of services before the move. If we hadn’t had similar problems in the past I most likely would have thought this to be a one-time mistake and I would have called someone to work it out, however, since this was not the first time we’d had issues I let me frustrations get the better of me and I immediately sent out a rant on Twitter.

To my surprise I received a response within about 10 minutes that someone would be contacting me within a few minutes to resolve the issue. Sure enough, I got a message and to make a long story short, my problem was resolved within a ½ hour of posting about it.

Experience #2

I needed to buy some new shoes as the ones I was currently wearing were almost falling off my feet. I went to a local store tried on several pair and finally found some I liked. I bought the shoes and that was that.

Unfortunately after only a week, I noticed that the shoes were very poorly made. The stitching was fraying, the sole started to crack and leak, etc. So I took them back to the store where I had purchased them and was told that because they had already been worn they could not be returned. (Not an unusual policy for shoes, but I wanted to check to make sure).

Thinking back to the experience I had with Big Cable I decided to try a little experiment. I went on Twitter and started to rant about the shoes. Sure enough within a few minutes Scratchers Shoes started following me, only instead of responding directly to me they just posted deals and news about their lasted fashions. I tried a more direct approach using the company handle and shoe model in my Tweets, but the most I ever got over 1 week was a direct message letting me know about a new line of shoe.

Conclusion

Without getting into too much detail, I learned a very valuable lesson from these experiences. Both of these companies have a large national presence and both are quite dominant in their markets. Where they differ dramatically is their use of social media.

 Big Cable seems to have identified what they hope to achieve using social media and they have identified the tools to help them achieve that goal. They are using those tools to engage their audience, to listen to their concerns and to correct problems. Scratchers Shoes, on the other hand, seems to have decided that this is just another way to promote their products, there’s nothing wrong with that, but if all they are going to do is blast me with more adds… why spend the effort on something that is supposed to be social?

This isn’t supposed to be seen as an exhaustive analysis of each company’s social media strategy. What I’m hoping to point out is that with so many social technologies available, a company must have a clearly defined strategy in place in order to make the most of each tool… but that’s another post entirely.