October 3, 2008
How We Twitter @sixapart
At Six Apart, we take our presence on Twitter (follow us at @sixapart) seriously, and we have a goal of being one of the best corporate users of the popular service. That might seem a little odd, since most of us see Twitter as a fun little lightweight service that we use mostly for personal messages, so it bears some explanation.
Part of it is just our heritage. We know the folks that make Twitter and we like them and think they share a lot in common with our attitude and community at Six Apart. But more importantly, we have a long tradition of directly interacting with our community wherever the conversations are taking place, whether that's on blogs or anywhere else on the web. And seeing so many of our customers, partners and bloggers on Twitter meant we had to be there too, in a way that was useful, sincere, and (hopefully!) fun. We wanted to make @sixapart worth following even if you aren't yet a customer or partner of Six Apart, but if you were someone who's just interested in blogging or how the web is evolving. We frankly wanted to make it good enough that you'd encourage your friends to follow the account, too.
The great news is, our community noticed the work we've put into being the best business on Twitter, and it comes as no surprise that they've blogged about it. Here's some great recent examples:
- From Slate's (Movable Type-powered!) BizBox Blog: "Props to TypePad. Note how the customer--that would be one of us--was able to get superior service without even having to seek it out. New Web 2.0 technologies and products allow such things, but only if you take full advantage of them."
- And Ogilvy's 360º Digital Influence Blog has a post in their "Why Twitter Should Matter To You" series entitled Twustomer Service Edition: "Six Apart is doing a great job listening, engaging, and acting - and their doing it in a way that produces happy, vocal customers."
We could tease a little bit about the phrase "Twustomer Service" evoking Elmer Fudd's voice, though there's nothing wrong with having some fun while pointing out rock-solid fundamentals of doing good business. Ginevra Whalen, a long-time Six Aparter who was behind both of the Twitter conversations highlighted in these posts, also gets interviewed for the Ogilvy post. But the ideal of connecting to anyone who wants to get the most out of blogging and the web is something backed up by all of us here at Six Apart, from our community team to our professional support folks to our services team, who all work directly with bloggers every day.
Best of all, it seems like our community agrees. Just take a look at some our favorite tweets on the @sixapart account — they cover everything we love about our community:
- If we announce a new product, our community can let us know immediately what they think, as @kimonostereo did with a recent launch: "Virtual Movable Type is simply awesome."
- Our customers can let us know when they're getting the most out of our tools, as @marcjohns did recently: "Overhauling my website using Typepad. The more I use it, the more I totally dig it. Getting rid of my ol clunker of a table-infested site."
- When we go to events, we can get instant feedback, as @dbrazeal offered to our CEO Chris Alden at the recent BlogWorld conference: "Chris Alden (Six Apart): Today's mainstream social networks are like yesterday's mainstream media. Will be fragmented #bwe08"
- And we can see how our customers inspire each other and us with their praise and encouragement, like CitizenDino: "The Six Apart people are simply inspiring. And having read about them in the Sarah Lacy book made it cooler.
There are lots more ways for this conversation to evolve, and we do know that a lot of times Twitter is just used to vent or get complaints off your chest. So we're ready to respond to that as well — we don't expect everything you say to us to be perfect, and we do expect it to be passionate.
Honestly, the tools for tracking and responding to these conversations are still relatively new, so they're not perfect at helping us catching every mention and responding as quickly as we'd like. (Customers should still always file help tickets to get support directly from us!) But despite the challenges, we want to try to get this right because we think making it easier to have a direct connection to Six Apart means its that much more likely to be listening and responding to what you need. All you have to do is follow @sixapart and we'll be following your conversations, too.
1 Comments
The ideal of connecting to anyone who wants to get the most out of blogging and the web is something backed up by all of us here at Six Apart,very well said
Thanks
kuber