@prodigalsam We didn’t know you ate there. This changes everything 🙁
— Wendy’s (@Wendys) April 20, 2013
Wendy’s social media team continues to impress with timely, sharp, and creative posts. @prodigalsam, a Twitter comedian with over 108,000 followers, posted a joke about making eye contact with someone at McDonald’s. Within 3 minutes, Wendy’s posted a clever response that received 673 favorites and 101 retweets. This example teaches us 3 important lessons in social media.
Follow Your Influencers
You need to pay attention to the right influencers to be able to respond in a timely fashion. It’s likely that Wendy’s is using a social media monitoring solution, watching certain keywords and providing their team an opportunity to respond. This isn’t as expensive as it seems – you can use HootSuite to monitor keywords and be prepared to respond.
Be Vigilant
Wendy’s response came at 10:02pm est on a Friday night. They had team members monitoring and ready to respond to people at all hours. Though your team may not work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, be vigilant about responding people and not letting an opportunity pass when you have a chance to make a great impression for your brand.
Know Your Audience
Wendy’s voice is young, funny, clever, and succinct. Though their voice doesn’t deviate much, how they address specific members of their audience is different. For example, check out these two conversations:
@iambraga Sorry to hear that! Please tell us about your experience here: bit.ly/Z7zOEm
— Wendy’s (@Wendys) April 19, 2013
A customer service situation
@stix How about the first to tweet you back?
— Wendy’s (@Wendys) April 19, 2013
Engaging with a customer
When you have an upset customer or constituent, your job on Twitter isn’t to completely resolve the situation – hard to do in 140 characters – but provide a mechanism for the customer to talk to someone at your organization.
Both of these messages still fit the voice of Wendy’s – in the customer service situation, they didn’t get “corporate-speak” in their response, they maintained an upbeat, yet concerned response.
There are countless opportunities for you to engage with people in social media and create a win for your brand.
