Last week at Socia Media Breakfast, I learned that AT&T has 15 Customer service reps and a full-time analyst dedicated to Twitter. This got me thinking about how businesses organize, scale and manage a large Twitter presence. I looked at 5 case studies for 5 different approaches:
1.) Organize by Customer Services Reps: AT&T
AT&T sends ~1,000 tweets per day per rep (15 full-time customer care reps). They have 14 Twitter Accounts for service plus a handful of content specific accounts (e.g. @ATTNews, @ATTmusic, @BizSolutions). Each customer service rep has a personalized account with the rep’s photo and bio. They add new Twitter accounts for each new customer service rep. (We previously talked about how brands use Twitter for customer service)
Others Examples: Comcast, Charter
2.) Organize by Product Group/Business Unit: Microsoft
Microsoft organizes and scales Twitter by product or business unit. This strategy helps Microsoft target content and messaging to the unique audiences across a broad range of product groups. You’ll see a very different approach if you follow XBox vs. Office vs. Sharepoint, matching the diverse audiences.
Other Examples: Intuit, Oracle, Cisco, Dell
3.) Organize by Store Location or Geography: Whole Foods
Whole Foods has a massive Twitter presence with more than 200 total handles. These accounts are organized by city and store locations. Whole Foods also maintains one central account which has over 1.7M followers. Given the local nature of their business, Whole Foods can cater content specifically to local customers. I suspect we’ll see the approach as other retailers and restaurants scale on Twitter.
Other examples: Four Seasons Hotels
4.) Organize by Content Type: BuddyTV
Although BuddyTV is considerably smaller than the other case studies, they have a large and highly effective Twitter presence. BuddyTV has 18 accounts, each with a unique content focus for a single TV show. They also have one central account for general TV related updates (@BuddyTV).
5.) Put the Entire Company to Work: Best Buy
With their unique (and well publicized) Twelpforce initiative, BestBuy basically put the entire company to work on Twitter. The company is represented by 2,000+ employees. Each employee tweets for themselves, but also uses the channel to connect with customers, answer questions, and help solve problems. Best Buy even publicized the initiative with TV spots.
Follow-up Questions
- How will companies organize and scale social media internally? How will social media fit into the org chart?
- What tools will be needed to help organizations manage social media at scale?
- How will scaling occur… top down vs. bottom up?
