Positively Glorious!

This is a follow-up to my previous post on the use of Social Networking in Business. It’s meant as a real-life example of Twitter being used for excellent customer service by the folks at Posterous.

It’s also meant as a very serious suggestion to all tech companies- including non-tech companies who have tech-savvy customers.

Use Twitter!

Twitter is one of the greatest things to happen to customer service since the telephone.

Seriously, people. Twitter is one of the greatest things to happen to customer service since the telephone. Well, maybe that’s a bit toward hyperbole, but not too far off. It works, and if you’re not using it, then I’ll tell you it works better than you can imagine.

Look, don’t believe the posts about Comcast’s success, or Dell’s strategy to collect and rank customer issues (but you should at least read about them.) Believe me. Here’s an example:

Recently I’ve been playing with Posterous as a way to facilitate blogging. (To learn everything about the tool, visit the site). Basically it is billed as a way to fill the gap between Twitter (140 characters) and long blog posts that are often closer to essays. Since I tend to be a bit loquacious, I thought I’d try to use it.

So I go set up an account, set up email, and start emailing my thoughts to my Posterous page which will autopost to Positively Glorious!. Very quickly I start wondering if it is worth it. Cool idea- but is it a solution in search of a problem? Realistically, I can email directly to Positively Glorious! using a WordPress Plugin, so why should I use Posterous?

I can email directly to Positively Glorious! using a WordPress Plugin, so why should I use Posterous?

I start thinking about it, and Tags and Categories would allow me to separate my Posterous blog entries, maybe using a different position on my front page to show them. It would still overlap the communications channels, because I would have my Blog and a Posterous page, but it would at least be the start of something possibly useful- and hey, I’m a dedicated early adopter, so starts and possibilities are all I need.

So, I make a short comment on Twitter (actually- I used Identi.ca- which cross-posts to Twitter, but those are details):

“Posterous would be more useful to me if you could autotag and assign categories when you autopost to your blog using it.”

Basically, I was just stating a mild frustration. However, that mild frustration was caught by a programmer at Posterous. The nice thing about Twitter is that I’ve never heard of this fellow, and he’s never heard of me, yet mere minutes after I make a comment about Posterous to no-one in particular, I get a reply:

“@Mettadore funny you should mention tagging / categories. that’s what i’m working on now. =)”

If you can’t see the power of this- then I hope you are directly competing with me.

I send a comment out to no-one in particular, and immediately get a response back… from someone in particular

I send a comment out to no-one in particular, and immediately get a response back… from someone in particular. Not only that, but from someone who is already working on my problem! Suddenly, I start thinking that even if Posterous is not completely useful yet, I may just use it anyway. Why? Because there are probably people already working on whatever stupid little thing I may want. Now I know- or at least think I know- that very soon it’s going to be something greater than I imagined.

Seriously people, this is an absolute no-brainer. And there’s more. Because this morning I sent another comment to the Twitter-verse:

“Oops. Turns out that if you accidently try to blog to Posterous from the wrong email account- it’ll automagically set up a new account. Bleh”

This time, I wasn’t even complaining about Posterous! I was mainly saying that if you accidentally post from one of the accounts you don’t have set up- then maybe you should pay more attention before posting. Posterous has a great system in that you don’t need to set up an account before you post- but that means those of us with accounts need to be just a bit more… well, awake, before posting.

Anyway, the whys are not important. What’s important is that minutes later yet another Posterous person responds to my note with:

“@Mettadore If you add your other email addresses to your posterous account, it will merge them all together.”

See the pattern? Can I make it any clearer? I’ve already got email accounts set up and was really just complaining about my lack of coffee- but even then, there’s still someone looking out for me.

And there’s even more! (I sound like I’m going to say “if you call now-”). I responded to both of the people who responded to me. Thus, everyone following me- nearly 100 people with my relatively small Twitter following- will see my response to them. They can (and believe me, often do) look back at the person to see what I’m talking about.

Suddenly, you have the opportunity to have someone who’s never heard of Posterous trying to find out more

Suddenly, you have the opportunity to have someone who’s never heard of Posterous trying to find out more just because I was happy and wrote a note back. Again- that’s not just a possibility. There are two of my friends who’ve asked me what Posterous is since this happened. They asked me specifically because of my Twitter posts.

I’ve still got issues with using Posterous. The main one being tagging and categories. Another being my frequent use of pull-quotes and such complex formatting. These are things that I’ll have to iron out before using it religiously. Still, here’s the meat: If my experience with Posterous were merely one of frustration and questioning- I might have given it up. However, my experience is one of possibilities and interaction. Thus, I’m posting this- a much longer post- using it. Something I never would have attempted before without pull-quotes (I may still add them manually to Positively Glorious!, since I’m a formatting junky).

Look everyone. You don’t have to run out and set up a Twitter account and keyword RSS feeds for searches relating to your company immediately. Just at least promise me you’ll think about it. Maybe as the nights get longer, you’ll sit by the fireplace one evening with a glass of wine and actually give it some thought? Can you promise me that?

Me? Hell, it’s fundamental to my business plan- even if the VCs never see it mentioned.

By the way, if you’re directly competing with me, remember: Twitter is all hype- completely useless.

Posted by email from Mildly Glorious (posterous)