Tasha Harrison

We’re all busy people, always have been. The most overused excuse in business is that people don’t have time. Which is why social networking seems like it’s going to take too much time to be worth it. Many people read about Twitter and LinkedIn and learn how great they are for their business, which they can be, but, having joined up and filled out their profiles, realise they don’t have enough time to really make the most of them. It can be pretty intimidating when you first get on Twitter and follow a few people. You’re not really sure what you’re supposed to do and you quickly realise that it’s not just a load of people talking about making tea, as many people suppose.

The most important thing when joining an online network is to make sure you’ve got enough time to invest in it and to ensure that it is the right network for you and your business. This can be a matter of trial and error, but if you invest the time at the beginning you will find that the benefits far outweigh the time it costs you.

Last week saw two great victories for social media.  The first was the Guardian/Trafigura/Super-injunction debacle, that highlighted the growing trend of preventing the press from reporting certain stories that would be particularly harmful to the reputation of organisations.  After much uproar on Twitter the injunction was lifted and the Guardian was able to publish the details of Trafigura’s toxic waste dumping antics.

The second victory was against the Daily Mail.  Jan Moir’s article about Stephen Gately’s death caused outrage and upset for suggesting that Gately’s death was not ‘natural’, as the corroners report had said, but was in some way connected to his sexuality.  So once again Twitter mobilised to share their outrage, forcing Moir to apologise and causing major advertisers, such as Marks and Spencers, to request that their advert be removed from the page.  See Charlie Booker’s article here.

What these two events highlight is the shift in power from the news being controlled by a few, to it being shared and discussed by millions.  We now have the ability to share information at staggering speed and for the first time in history everyone is a publisher, writer and distributor of information.  What this means for businesses is that they too have an opportunity to join in the discussion, not to control it, but to play an active role.  Trafigura were attempting the old school approach of shut the press up and no one will ever know, but this is no longer possible in the world of social media.

Before Twitter all of our thoughts where focussed into our blog and discussions took place on both our own blogs and other people’s blogs.  You referred to other’s blogs in your own posts and continued the conversation that way.

Now we see a blog post that we find interesting, Tweet it and then continue the conversation on Twitter.  Obviously conversations do still continue on the blog post as it is easier to comment and follow the discussion within that format, but has Twitter diluted the discussion and caused us to blog less?  Instead of sharing our ideas in a well thought out blog post do we simply quickly write them out in 140 characters, possibly losing the essence of what we mean?

As Twitter is evolving I am finding that my blog is still the best place to publish my main ideas, but I’m not sure that this is the case for everyone. It will be interesting to see how blogs evolve and whether micro-blogging is sustainable within the whirlwind of spam that is currently afflicting it.

The internet has come a long way since its inception.  A big part of its evolution has been the growth of broadband, enabling users to share media content easily and efficiently.  The following video is an excellent visual representation of how the web works today.

If ever I saw the benefits of social media for a brand it was last night and today via Twitter. I live at the end of a half mile lane in the Sussex countryside (at the moment). Recently some BT engineers were spotted undertaking some work at the bottom of the lane, a few hours later our broadband went down. A stressed phonecall to my neighbour, who is a web designer, revealed that our landline numbers had changed. The BT engineers had somehow got the wires crossed!

From this address we currently run four businesses, two of which are online based, so this obviously caused massive problems. After some heated discussions with BT personnel in a call centre we were promised normal service by the end of play the following day.

Once I had recovered from my anger I decided to test BT’s customer service and, knowing that they were one of the biggest brands to venture onto Twitter, I tweeted my disgust.  This is the tweet: “Little rant about the idiots at BT: not only have they cut off our internet but they’ve changed our phone number! So annoyed, not surprised.”

The following day, once I had got my internet back I found this from @BTCare: @TashaHarrison Oh dear this does not sound good at all, Can I help you?

It might have come after the problem was fixed, but it made me feel like they were listening. It also delighted me that I was part of a successful internet marketing strategy by a massive brand.

If anyone ever doubts the power of Twitter and the role it can play in customer service then think about how easy it was for them to make me feel better about their company. It doesn’t take long to monitor the internet and then say a few kind words.