Five Minute Monitoring part 3: How Your Small Business Can Keep Tabs on Buzz

Knowing what people are thinking...and saying...about your store is important. We recommend you take five minutes per day to learn about our customers. Twitter is all over the news these days...it's a microblogging application which allows users to post short (140 character messages) from their computers or mobile phones...such messages are called "Tweets". Users can also post links to other online sites, and upload photos. The Twitter Search Engine is a quick and easy way to find out what people are saying on Twitter, right now. And it's so easy: go to the engine, enter your search term (such as the name of your store or the name of your competitor's store) and see what you get. I just used the search engine with the term "McDonald's" and found: -someone said that "McDonald's is by far the worst company when it comes to the safety and respect of their customers!" -a link to a news report how McDonald's fights viral storm over black site: http://tinyurl.com/n6aws8 -a link to information that McDonald's plans economy products: Fast food chain McDonald's is planning to diversify into the economy segment .. http://tinyurl.com/qgun39 What would I do if I was McDonald's and saw these items? Well, I'd try to send a direct message via Twitter to the person who posted the negative information and see if I could get to the root of the problem. And I'd probably re-tweet the information about economy products. We have a new Twitter action guide that can help you navigate Twitter. Check it out here.

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Member Comments

"word of mouth spread offline is more positive and more likely to be interpreted as credible than wom spread online, according to a recent research study from womma member company the keller fay group. fifty-nine percent of those surveyed indicted they found wom transmitted face-to-face and on the phone was "highly" credible, versus 49% for online wom. the study also found that 66% of face-to-face wom communication was "mostly positive" versus 57% of the impressions on blogs and chat rooms. offline wom was also found to be 7% more likely to lead to purchase intent, according to the research." marsha t., advertising agency, baton rouge. la.

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