My friend Shel Israel is working on his book Twitterville and recently posted his notes about his conversations with the team at Dell that uses Twitter.
The last 3 paragraphs of his notes are just jam packed with some killer truth. I wanted to especially share those with you.
It is our strategy not to speak with one voice. A blogger who influenced me once wrote that he just can’t have an intelligent conversation with a Coke Bottle. People do not wish to speak with brands. They wish to speak with people. And at any big company, different people have different passions and knowledge sets.
Twitterville is wonderful for getting the message in from these 100 people Tweeting than our getting messages out through the 21 Twitter accounts. Twitterville is great because people tell you when you screwed up as quickly and as often as they tell you when one of your representatives was wonderful.
During tough economic times, it is even more valuable. You don’t need expensive focus groups anymore.Twitter is part of a social media strategy that allows us to bring customers into our company and walk down the hallways with them talking about things we share in common and very often those are Dell things.”
Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp's blog 