As you know, Twitter jumped the shark a couple of weeks ago when Ashton Kutcher and Oprah jumped aboard. Needless to say, Twitter has been all over the news and everyone is asking about it. On Mother’s Day, did your mom A) give you her Twitter handle or B) ask you “about this twitter thingy…?” When I spoke with my parents over the weekend they didn’t bat an eye when I used the phrase “live-tweeting.” So, with Twitter now as ubiquitous as, say, email, can we begin holding certain tweeters accountable?
TriMet is on Twitter and actively tweets news, service updates, outages and the like, yet it doesn’t seem they are actively engaging their audience. This morning, for example, I tweeted @TriMet regarding a late Yellow line MAX train. I asked “why the delay?” More than 12 hrs later, I have yet to receive a response from @TriMet. In this day and age, I have come to expect at least some acknowledgment that my question has been read, and honestly, I feel I deserve at least some answer…even if it may not be applicable hours later. I feel as a business, once you engage on Twitter, you should understand that there is a code of implied conduct with regards to followers and their engagement with you.
I have traveled a fair amount over the past year and discovered how the airlines have embraced Twitter as part of their business model. I have been in other cities where I see a tweet from Northwest or Continental Airlines regarding a specific flight and gate number before I get the reminder text message. By either automating the tweets with a robot or staffing the Twitter account appropriately, these businesses have successfully engaged their customers and audience.
My message to TriMet and other businesses who are trying to get into the Twittersphere – understand what you’re signing up for. If you’re a small business, you can get away with not tweeting ever hour of every day. There isn’t an expectation for that. If you are a public entity that lives by a schedule, you better be prepared and staffed accordingly to react to the latest incidents, schedule changes, breaking news and other types of alerts. With a service like Twitter, where you have the ability to broadcast information to thousands, you need to manage it properly. Ignoring tweets from followers specifically asking about your service doesn’t bode well for your twitkarma (I made that up.)
What do you think? Should businesses like TriMet be held to a hight standard when they decide to embrace a service like Twitter?
UPDATE: It has been asked if the TriMet twitter account is officially TriMet. It does state on the Trimet Twitter page “This is TriMet’s officisl Twitter.”
{ 13 comments }
Good post. If companies don’t “get it” – don’t “do it.” Companies need to understand the medium and the conversation before then actually climb aboard the bus…
@KimBrater
Oh, interesting – that used to be an unofficial feed of service alerts; I didn’t realize TriMet had actually taken over the account.
Good post and I linked to it on my site where I know for sure that TRIMET executives watch.
Twitter can not be an effective medium for 2-way communication. You are going to have to look at Twitter as a huge chatroom with thousands of people all talking at once. There is no possible way a company will be able to respond to every @ they receive, nor should they.
It may be a sad thing for some of the Twitter lovers to face, but it just doesn’t scale well to the size it has grown.
@Brewcaster – I disagree with your statement. TriMet is small compared to some of the companies who have embraced new technologies like Twitter. Comcast is on twitter and daily we hear stories of people getting answers to their customer service issues from Comcast via Twitter. My point is not necessarily to TriMet directly, but more to companies that engage with these types of technologies. If you are actively updating your feed with news and service alerts, it is implied that when asked about a delay, there would be feedback. I know you hate Twitter, so maybe I’m talking at a brick wall. Twitter is here, it is a viable source of information. Will it be the thing 2, 3 or 5 years from now? Maybe not, but for now, if a company tries to tweet, they need to understand their customer’s expectations. I don’t see that at this time.
True, but now imagine if 80% of Comcast subscribers were @tweeting to Comcast and expecting responses, would that still work?
@Brewcaster. You bring up a good point, but let me counter point. When email was ramping up as a means of communication in the 90’s, many companies had to modify their internal processes in order to deal with this new technology. It didn’t go from 0-80% overnight, it took years. I doubt the number of tweets to Comcast or other companies will go from what it is now to 80% overnight, but companies need to sit back and realize this is a viable means of communication and plan for it accordingly.
The real issue for me is – if you’re not willing to engage, then why be there? Twitter isn’t a one-way broadcast medium; anyone trying to use Twitter in that fashion will soon get unfollowed/ignored unless what they’ve got is truly interesting/worth following.
And if no one’s following you – what’s the point?
(See that Oprah, I’m talking to you! But of course, you’re not listening…)
Maybe trimet is too busy you know, driving busses and running out of money to respond to your “twits”. Would knowing why the line is late help it get there any faster?
I drink your 140 character limit. I drink it up!
I’m glad the Twitter police have shown up and are here to enforce “the one true way” to use the protocol…
Maybe the TriMet person doesn’t know to check their “mentions” tab?
Well, in case you haven’t noticed it, TriMet is facing a severe budget crunch and, as the webmaster herself said to me today, doesn’t really have the resources to do things like that.
I meant to post this yesterday, so I hope someone still offers their two cents. If TriMet’s doing things “wrong,” what local orgs/businesses are doing them right?
Most communicators know that best practices and learning from others is key. There are a handful that I think are using Twitter effectively — TravelPortland is one — but I’d love to keep an eye on more of your favorites.
And Jason, for what it’s worth, my org has seen huge budget cuts over the years, but we still make time for social media, as that’s where the conversations are occuring. Using a tool like Twhirl makes it really easy to do other work while still hearing the “pings” when you get an @reply or DM. Free resource, super easy, still get other work done…just saying.
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