An angry customer tweets about The Home Depot.

An angry customer walks out of a Home Depot in Tampa and sends a text message to Twitter: “Home Depot on N Florida Ave: I have 3 words for you – Customer Service FAIL.” Just two hours later Sarah Molinari responds from The Home Depot’s corporate headquarters with an offer to help.

Sarah has been hired by The Home Depot to be a spokesperson on Twitter. She monitors search results for the words “Home Depot” and offers help to those who have had a less-than-perfect experience with the company. But that’s not all: Sarah even goes the extra mile to offer occasional tips and techniques that customers can use on their home projects.

What The Home Depot is doing is not unique. Hundreds of companies are utilizing Twitter to improve customer service, monitor brands, and even establish personal relationships with customers.

Twitter: a Place to Publish What you ate for Breakfast.

Twitter is an online service started by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006. It allows users to publicly post short messages (called tweets) that appear in search results or other users’ Twitter accounts. Users can then “follow” other users to more easily keep track of tweets they might be interested in.

Despite being restricted to 140 characters in length, tweets can sometimes carry a lot of social force. After allegations of fraud in the June 2009 Iranian presidential election, Twitter became one of the only methods available to protestors to communicate with the outside world. At the time, news of the protests was more freely available through Twitter than CNN.¹

Events like those in Iran make us realize that Twitter is quickly revolutionizing the way we communicate as a society. Twitter isn’t just a place where self-aggrandizing computer nerds tweet about what they ate for breakfast, as some critics assert. It’s a place where the world comes together to communicate.

That’s why lots of big-name businesses have started trying to capitalize on Twitter. The most well known example is how the computer manufacturer Dell, Inc. has raked in over $3 million in Twitter-related sales by posting exclusive deals to the Twitter account @DellOutlet.

Yet there are also some companies that just don’t get it. JCPenney has taken a creepy approach to Twitter, stalking unsuspecting people who put the word “shopping” in their tweets. No one really likes that behavior on Twitter, as can be seen by the measly 997 followers that JCPenney has garnered from November 2008 to July 2009.

So, how can your company become successful with Twitter? The answer is threefold: you’ve got to be interesting, helpful, and personable. Let’s learn about each of these by looking at how other companies are using Twitter right now.

Be Interesting: Boring Tweets Doth not Followers Attract.

When a company is first starting out on Twitter, it’s difficult to find interesting things to tweet about. In fact, it’s so difficult that most companies thoughtlessly start tweeting daily specials, like @Walgreens is starting to do right now.

Whole Foods Market (@WholeFoods)

Whole Foods Market has done a really great job from the very beginning. From the get-go its tweets have been interesting, highlighting some fun things that were going on at specific stores. Within 7 days of tweeting about generic store happenings, people started to notice that Whole Foods was on Twitter – and things just took off from there. Within a year, Whole Foods has attracted almost a million followers.

Tony Hsieh from Zappos.com always has interesting tweets.

Zappos.com (@Zappos)

Tony Hsieh, Zappos.com CEO, has taken another approach. Tony personally runs the corporate Twitter account and always has interesting things to say. Many of them have nothing to do with work, but all of them are somewhat humorous. For example, on June 30th, 2009 he posted:

Gave Senator Reid (Senate Majority Leader) tour of Zappos. He had 5 bodyguards. Because, you know, I could easily overpower 4.

Within a year and three months, Tony has drawn in nearly 900,000 followers. If you’re looking for something to tweet about, especially in the beginning, just think of something witty! People will love it.

Woot.com (@Woot)

If done in the right taste, even daily specials can result in interesting tweets. Woot, an online shopping site with a quick inventory turnover, posts daily items for sale right into Twitter. And people love it. In two and a half years’ time, about 885,000 people have started following Woot.

Dell, Inc (@DellOutlet)

And then there’s Dell, the poster child of business success on Twitter. With the account @DellOutlet, Dell posts all kinds of deals exclusively on Twitter. As mentioned previously, nearly 800,000 followers have resulted in over $3 million in sales.

The point is this: you can tweet daily specials, coupons, or whatever else you want – as long as it’s interesting. You can only know what’s interesting, however, if you do your research. For example, if Walgreens knew that people wanted the ability to directly tweet with a pharmacist online, do you think they’d be still wasting time with daily specials?

Be Helpful: People Like Customer Service Superheros.

Customers send @comcastcares all kinds of support requests.

As you’re starting your business out on Twitter, be aware of opportunities to help your customers. Some companies are actually solving some pretty hefty customer issues with just 140 characters at a time.

Comcast (@comcastcares)

Cable and media giant Comcast certainly has its hands full with technical support requests. That’s probably why it commissioned Frank Eliason to run the Twitter account @comcastcares: because he’s the best in the business.

Frank’s official title is “Director of Digital Care,” but it could also be “Customer Support Superhero.” Just one quick look at the support requests that Frank handles on a daily basis will prove that. Although it seems everyone in the world is having trouble connecting to the Internet, watching HBO, recording DVRs, or whatever – Frank always has time to respond to each one personally. He does it with class, too, without apologizing too much.

That’s where The Home Depot falls short. Sarah is doing a great job at supporting customers (as we learned just a little while ago), but there are too many apologies being thrown around. Often the customer’s real problem is never even addressed because there is so much emphasis on apologies.

Instead of apologizing so much, Frank at Comcast really focuses on being helpful to the customer. He often asks for more details about customer support requests and tries to solve them without ever referring the customer to standard customer support (you know, the call center in India).

Being helpful on Twitter isn’t just about customer support. Sometimes being helpful on Twitter is all about sharing links and other tidbits of information that might be interesting to your followers.

JetBlue Airways (@JetBlue)

JetBlue Airways keeps travelers updated with useful information on gate changes, delays, and other nationwide travel advisories. Individual travelers often ask JetBlue for help from their mobile devices, right at the gate!

Whole Foods Market (@WholeFoods)

Whole Foods (we’ve mentioned them a lot, huh?) does a good job at posting helpful links. In just the past few days, it has shared some good recipes for delicious Fourth of July popsicles, watermelon lemonade, and other tasty treats.

The bottom line is this: Twitter introduces a unique opportunity to communicate with customers, both one-on-one and as a group. Posting helpful links and anecdotes is great. Personally helping a customer is even better.

Be Personable: Even if You’re Just a Beverage.

Twitter was invented for people, not for businesses. So, as your business makes its way into the Twitter world, remember that you’re on foreign territory. You must do your best to look and act human!

Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) vs. JetBlue Airways (@JetBlue)

Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways both hit the Twitter scene at nearly the same time two years ago. Both companies’ Twitter accounts are markedly similar: both post similar types of tweets, run similar competitions and give similar deals exclusively to Twitter users. Yet, JetBlue has about 600,000 more followers than Southwest. What could possibly explain the difference between these two brothers?

One possibility might be how helpful JetBlue is to individual users. About 60% of JetBlue’s most recent tweets are conversations with other users, compared to 20% at Southwest Airlines. Even though Southwest posts more photos and retweets more often than JetBlue, those things don’t seem to attract as many followers.

Brad from Starbucks sometimes helps customers decide what to order.

Starbucks (@Starbucks)

That’s because Twitter is based on person-to-person interactions. For your business to be successful on Twitter you’ve got to remember to be human; otherwise, people won’t be interested in following you.

Starbucks has learned this very well: 90% of its tweets are directed at specific users. Brad, the Starbucks spokesperson, is a champion at being personable with everyone; he takes suggestions, responds to criticism, and even helps customers decide what to order!

CocaCola (@CocaCola) vs. Pepsi (@Pepsi)

This personal nature of Twitter has great implications for your company’s brand. Amnesia Razorfish, an Australia-based marketing group, recently performed a Twitter experiment with the popular cola brands Pepsi and Coke . The goal of the experiment: to get Pepsi and Coke to follow each other. Amnesia tweets:

To end an old war: Dear @pepsi and @cocacola, why not follow each other on Twitter and be friends

The results were astounding. Hundreds of people started retweeting (a common grassroots way of spreading news on Twitter) the original message from Amnesia, and within eighteen hours both Coke and Pepsi had exchanged pleasantries.

Although similar exchanges have occurred between brands on Twitter before (Google, Yahoo and Microsoft did it a long time ago), this conversation between Coke and Pepsi reminds us of the brand personification that can occur for even non-tech companies on Twitter. For probably the first time in the history of the world, formerly intangible brands can now take on a personality and interact directly with customers.

As a business owner, you must exploit this brand personification to its fullest potential. Make sure you never miss an opportunity to develop a relationship between a customer and your brand.

Conclusion: Developing Your Twitter Strategy

Here’s a two-word secret to using Twitter for your business: be human. People want to interact with other people, not machines. That’s why you’ve got to be interesting, helpful, and personable to gain the respect of your fellow Twitterers.

It helps to have a plan of attack. You’d never launch a new product into the market without doing a bit of market research, would you? So why would you jump headfirst into Twitter unless you’ve done your homework?

Find out what your customers need. If your customers need another avenue for technical support, follow the example of @comcastcares. If you need to attract more attention to your company, follow the example of @zappos. If you want to tell customers about your products in a non-intrusive way, look to @wholefoods. If your customers just want coupons and daily deals, emulate @DellOutlet as closely as possible.

Twitter isn’t just a fad anymore. It represents a new, cost-effective way to personally communicate with your customers like never before. With the proper planning and techniques, your business can profit greatly from just a few tweets a day.

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