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Twitter Responses Matter

Posted At: January 13, 2014 8:07 a.m.
by Sarah de Jong

How many times have you tweeted at a company and your tweet gets overlooked? Happens to me all the time. However, if I do get a response, retweet or favorite, it makes a large impact on my view of the company.

Take Chipotle, for example. I tweeted at the company a few months ago when I first visited the food sanctuary (don’t worry, I’ve since made up for the fact that I hadn’t eaten there before). About an hour later, I got a notification on my phone that Chipotle tweeted me. THE Chipotle Twitter account. I was star struck that the Chipotle staff would take time out of working to improve Chipotle’s delicious menu (if there’s even a possibility that it could be improved) to tweet at little ol’ me. I soon found out that the staff works diligently to reply to almost every tweet they receive.

Other companies that are excellent about Twitter responses are Southwest Airlines and Home Depot. These companies make it a priority to listen and respond to their customers on a platform that customers use frequently to sound off on their experiences.

One of the greatest things about this way of responding is that it is transparent. Customers usually tweet about their experience just after it happened, so the emotions are raw. This immediacy gives the company the opportunity to handle the problem in real time. Also, other people can see exactly what fellow Twitter users are saying about the company and how each company chooses to respond to the tweets, good or bad.

The more confident I am that a company will retweet or respond to my tweets, the more likely I am to reach out to it in the first place. If companies are actually interacting with their customers, they will gain more publicity on the social media site, from both customers and themselves.

So, companies, if you’re looking for more mentions on Twitter, make sure to reach out to your customers and reply, not just to the favorable ones. Now, it’s time for me to tweet away; Chipotle is waiting.

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