Tailor your approach

“I honestly think Twitter’s best application is customer service,” Klick Communications director Kim McKay says.

United States electronics retailer Best Buy gets this. In 2009, it unveiled Twelpforce, enabling in-store employees to respond to customer inquiries on Twitter. Within 12 months 28,000 inquiries were answered by the experts.

“They were the first guys to hand over the reins from the marketing team and give them directly to the guys who worked with customers,” McKay says.

Tapping into an existing resource to crowd-source responses is the genius in this idea, Roadshow Films local marketing manager Rob Moore says. He agrees that companies need to play to platforms’ strengths.

“Unfortunately many advertisers ... use the same content approach for all platforms, just repurposing their work as they go,” he says. “You need a strategic approach for each platform and you need an overarching strategy that joins them all together.”

“I applaud their ability to execute that,” Lorna Jane’s digital strategist, Sam Zivot says. “What’s fascinating is how they manage to control the quality of the responses across the enormity of the Twelpforce.”

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