Posted by Maureen Petron -- Last week I was catching up with my
Google Reader*, and came across
this post on BusinessWeek’s The New Entrepreneur blog. It’s the author’s top 20 recommended people to follow on Twitter if you’re an entrepreneur.
It’s a great place to start if you’re new to
Twitter, or want to use Twitter in your business. The list covers small-business writers (
@smallbiztrends), government agencies
(@BusinessDotGov), uber-entreprenuers
(@richardbranson), and once-small businesses that have made it big, largely online
(@zappos). (Unfortunately,
@NASEtweets didn’t make the list, but I still hope you’re following us!)
The recommendation I’ve been most fascinated with is
@comcastcares. I’m actually a former Comcast cable subscriber myself. We switched to DirectTV largely due to a wider availability of sports viewing, but not after our fair share of problems with Comcast. It looks like that’s one of the driving factors behind @comcastcares – much of the activity on the account is monitoring questions and complaints about the cable service and responding. Even if it’s just an offer to help, or look into a problem, or offering an e-mail or phone number to get the answer, it’s…. well… brilliant.
I’m impressed with companies that can respond to criticism head-on. Most often, it’s the best way to turn around someone’s opinion. Imagine sitting at home, waiting for a cable technician to show up, and they don’t arrive in the 4-hour window you’ve been expecting them. Are they not going to show at all? Are they just going to be later? Will you ever get those 4 hours of your life back?
So you tweet your frustration. And the cable provider tweets you back – asks you to direct message them the phone number on the account and they’ll tell you how far out the truck is.
It’d go a long way in calming me down.
The New Entrepreneur included @comcastcares as an example to your small business. One frustrated customer tells their friends, and if they are on Twitter or
Facebook or
LinkedIn or many other social networking sites, they tell a lot of friends. Why not nip that complaint in the bud, and instead that person tells a story about how great it was that you listened to them?
Here’s a rundown by
Mashable (an online guide to all things social media) on
How To: Use Twitter For Customer Service.
And if much of what I wrote in today’s post was Greek to you, then step back and visit
Mashable’s Twitter Guide Book. It explains how to get started on Twitter, find followers, and more.
*Not familiar with
Google Reader, or any “reader” for that matter? It’s a way to keep up with multiple Web sites and blogs in one place. Learn about
Google Reader, and start populating your reader with the
NASE Staff Blog feed!