Be accessible
There's something inescapably cool about regular people asking the CEO of Ford Motor Company questions on the internet. But if the conversation were in a Ford-sponsored chatroom or run through a traditional online publisher, a lot of people would likely doubt the veracity of the event, speculating that Ford had somehow made certain that all questions were pre-approved. But when Ford CEO Alan Mulally jumped on the company's Twitter account, Ford followers got genuine access to a man in a position to answer their questions about the brand, says Scott Monty, who oversees the car company's Twitter profile, which spreads across several accounts.
When asked about the best thing that has come from Ford's numerous Twitter accounts, Monty cited access above all else.
"People have seen that they have direct access to executives within Ford," Monty explains. "[When] I asked Alan Mulally to take some questions on Twitter during a media day, he happily participated and answered five questions in quick succession. People were thrilled that they got to have direct access to the CEO and were impressed with his candid answers."
One of those people was Jessica Gottlieb, a Los Angeles woman, who says she now thinks more of the brand because she's been able to hear from the company's executives directly. And while Gottlieb may not run out and buy a Ford car tomorrow, she says she will look at Ford (something she hasn't done for past purchases) because both Mulally and Monty took the time to engage on behalf of the brand.
Talk, listen, or both?
Ecommerce retailer Zappos has reached legendary proportions on Twitter. But for Zappos, it's not about tweeting a branded message endlessly. In fact, more often than not, it's about hearing what hundreds of thousands of people have to say about the brand.
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, one of the first major CEOs to tweet, is noted for engaging with followers, but Brian Kalma, who manages the day-to-day Twitter activities for the company, says customer feedback has been the No. 1 benefit for the brand.
"[Twitter has] become a massive feedback mechanism where we can hear peoples' thoughts on site improvements, what we are doing well, what we are not doing well enough," Kalma says. "We can aggregate the feedback and turn it into actionable items for improvements."
Kalma cautions, however, that feedback is only the result of genuine engagement, because if the brand can't have a real conversation with its followers, the followers aren't likely to tell the brand what they think.
Of course, what people think might not always be positive. Take this recent example from TDS Telecommunications, which used Twitter to address a serious service outage.
When a TDS phone exchange went down in Milwaukee, Wis., the company used its Twitter account to update customers on the situation.
According to DeAnne Boegli, national public relations manager for TDS, the outage may not have pleased customers, but they "loved" the company's response, which garnered the brand 100 additional followers the next day.
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