Twitter is a curious beast. I have been using it for about 9 months now and have managed 2,000+ tweets. Scarily, that averages approx 7 tweets a day. At present I have about 510 followers, and I would hazard a guess that whilst I follow potentially up to 250/300 of those people back 80% of them I don't know exactly who they are or what they do.
Because of the incredibly open nature of Twitter, I (try to) make a point of not mouthing off too much. Granted I do sometimes, but I don't say anything that I would freak out if the
person/company involved found out about. This is sometimes frustrating as you know it would make you feel better if you could let all those people know exactly what you think, but hey, we had to handle frustrations before Twitter, so I go with more traditional methods in these instances.
Sometimes, something does really bug you though, and because you know the company are on Twitter, sometimes you send a tweet to see how responsive they may be. I certainly have done this twice with @vodafoneNZ and I have to say, both times I have had a phenomenal response. My issues were solved amazingly quickly, leaving me with a brilliant brand experience and creating something of a brand advocate. One of my issues I attempted to solve through the call centre and hit a wall. I honestly believe that if I had not had direct contact with @vodafoneNZ, it would not have been resolved, and Vodafone would have lost an incredibly loyal customer (same cell number for 9 years).
On the other hand, I attempted to obtain information from @bloomcosmetics and while I did get an initial response (an unhelpful one) they never replied to my second call for help via Twitter. Colour me unloved. I have since moved on from the brand and probably won't purchase again. Yes, I am just one person, but I would hazard a guess this may have not just happened to me.
Now, what happens when a Twitterer vents on Twitter, in the hopes (I'm guessing) of gaining some form of a response from the company involved, and whilst the COMPANY come back with a very tempered response and solves this problem, an employee of this company (who the Twitterer unfortunately happened to be following) very openly bitches about what is going on. What then?
What we need to remember about Twitter and this goes all the way to celebrities (talk about PR nightmares!) is that because you have little control over who can see what you are tweeting, you are opening yourself and your tweets up to the world. Little mini press releases depending on who you are and who is following you. Are you really sure you know exactly who those 10/50/100/500 are, who they work for and how what you say could turn around and bite you in the arse?
Recently the lovely @livlarge sent out a Tweet which I think is something that more people (and companies) should embrace, maybe even take on as their ethos?
And then, employees should be reminded that even though it may be your personal account, unfortunately at the end of the day, we are all associated with our place of employment, and perhaps Twitter is not the place to vent all issues.
