How Many Tweets do You Respond to?

Twitter wouldn’t work if communication was one way.  If all you could do was send out tweets and the responses were hidden, what fun would that be?  Social media has changed the way information is shared. If your response is too late or nonexistent, you better prepare for damage control.

Using Twitter involves two things, sending and responding to messages.  If you master those two things, your plan is fail proof!

Of course you need to target the right audience and design your profile page and recruit some followers, but if you create compelling content and respond in a timely manner to a situation or retweet a link, then you are on the right path.

Putting together a tweet response plan wouldn’t be a bad idea.  Here’s a few tips on things to keep in mind when creating your response plan:

Time management

Plan your response time just as you planned your tweet time.  As your following grows and your responses increase, you’ll find that you spend more time responding than tweeting.  Keep in mind, tweets can be scheduled, responses can’t.

Private vs. Public

Some responses warrant public attention and others do not.  A simple thank you or retweeting a customers compliment is something that you want your followers to see (don’t forget to save it as a favorite).  Asking someone with a complaint to DM their email address in a reply is also acceptable in that situation.  A private matter turned public can make a bad situation worse.

Create a comment/concern mailbox

Create an email address specifically for comments or concerns from Twitter and display the email address on your custom background.  Having an alternative way to provide feedback works great for those who have something to say but necessarily don’t want to tweet about it.

Personal not automated

An automated response looks a lot like those “thanks for following…” direct messages.  You only have 140 characters, so it doesn’t take much time to address their concern.  If you don’t have a comment/concern email, provide your own. Even if you have to run it by another department, the process has started.  The quicker the response, the happier the customer.

Analyze

Since feedback on Twitter is instantaneous, you are able to identify trends quickly. If you keep receiving some bad news from a certain market, you are able to respond quicker.  Want to measure ad performance, do a Twitter search on your brand or product. Twitter is a great tool to see how people are responding.

Responding to every tweet would be nice but it’s understandable when you can’t. It’s okay to miss some, just don’t miss the one that counts.