If a customer has a question for a company or a brand, it’s easy enough for them to ask it on Twitter, but the question is, will the company or brand hear them? And will they respond? Users have indicated in a recent study from InboxQ that companies and brands would benefit by being more responsive. “Almost 60% of respondents said they would be more likely to follow a brand that answered them, and 64% said they would be more likely to make a purchase from that brand or company.” Customers want to be able to connect with companies and brands in order to feel appreciated and to express their opinions about a product or experience.

Customers have no problem voicing their thoughts, opinions, and concerns through their own personal social media outlets. This means that brands are no longer the only ones with a voice. Customers can be heard more loudly and publicly then ever before, leveling out the playing field between businesses and customers. Brands and companies can gain greater loyalty and increased profits by hearing and responding to their customers needs, wants, and desires.

So the question for you is, are you listening? Because whether you realize it or not, people are probably talking about your brand or company. It’s up to you to listen and engage with your customers on their turf.

(Oh, and by the way, if you’re still not sure how Twitter works or why you should bother with it, drop us a line and we’ll fill you in!)

Twitter, our personal favorite social media platform at VOD, has caught on like wild fire with their unique request for users to answer the question, “What’s happening?” in 140 characters or less. It can be one of the most effective ways to promote your company, service, or organization if used correctly. Twitter lets you send positive messages to existing and potential customers and clients by providing ongoing interaction with them, which can help you grow your network and develop further rapport.

One way that people and businesses are using Twitter to really connect is to include photos in some of their tweets. You may be thinking, “Who cares? What is the advantage of uploading a picture and how can that help me?” The use of pictures can add personality to your tweets. People usually like to make a connection with those they work with. By posting pictures, your followers can develop a deeper rapport with you or your business. Pictures show followers instantly what you are doing or what kind of progress has been made in a specific project. Plus, people tend to be curious beings. If someone you know uploads a picture and tweets about it, why not see exactly what they are talking about? Besides everyone likes pictures! Take advantage of this feature in order to help your business continue to become a well-rounded Tweeter!

Now that we’ve told you why photos in your tweets can be beneficial, we want to keep you updated on some changes coming to Twitter that tie into the photo upload conversation. Twitter users used to be able to pick from third-party sources like Yfrog or TwitPic to upload a picture, which would take users to either the Yfrog or TwitPic website to view the photo. With Twitter’s popularity continuing to grow, they have decided to take matters into their own hands and do what they can to keep people on their site. They’ll soon be launching a new feature that will allow for the same capabilities as the other third-party sources, but now it will all work officially within the Twitter family. Basically, that means they’re doing what they can to keep people engaged on their own website.

Check out Twitter’s official video introducing the new photo & video sharing feature

Tell us what you’ve been taking pictures of lately…or better yet, show us! Post a link to your latest tweeted photos, or your Flickr account. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

When I couldn’t log onto the Bank of America website Friday to schedule my mortgage payment, my first thought (as it usually is in these kinds of situations) was to check Twitter to see if anyone else was having problems with the site. Well, I quickly realized that I was not alone in my frustration (and I also realized that people who can’t access their money can get VERY angry and say some of the most incredible things!).

To their credit, Bank of America did have a Twitter team responding to the issue. But here’s where the lesson is, so pay attention. The response team’s Twitter handle is @BofA_Help. So every time I searched “Bank of America” or even “bankofamerica” I wasn’t seeing them. All I saw was tweet after tweet berating the bank for it’s down site (and even a threat by one disgruntled customer to burn it down!). I searched BofA too, and somehow never saw their tweets in that search. My tweet about the downed site was actually more to point out what seemed like a huge lack of response:

It wasn’t until they responded to my tweet and included “I work for Bank of America” in their tweet that I knew they even existed. (A sidenote here: BofA Help team, please ask someone if you can take another photo for your profile where it doesn’t look like one of those family portraits where everyone is matchy-matchy. Honestly, until I looked closer, I thought it actually was someone’s family portrait.)

So the simple lesson, as I see it: make sure your company’s name is actually part of your Twitter handle. And if you can’t get a twitter name with your business name (or your name is so incredibly long that it would cut down on your RT-ability because it uses up too many of the 140 characters), you better make sure you know what people are searching for when they look for you…and include those words in your tweets on a regular basis! (But, really, it makes more sense to just make sure your biz name is part of your handle.) Seriously. If I had searched for “Bank of America” and seen tweets like this, it would’ve been a completely different view of the company:

According to the Associated Press, the site was officially down for four hours. But the stream of irritated tweets went on for what seemed like forever… And, unfortunately, if anyone else was searching Twitter like I do, they probably wondered if BofA was even listening.

Recently I’ve been to a few restaurants where I’ve noticed signs pointing people to the restaurants’ social media presences. More and more local businesses are catching on to the importance of Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Foursquare, etc. And what’s even better is watching the interactions that are taking place between these restaurants and their customers (both online and off).

In Arlington Heights, IL (a suburb of Chicago), I go to a monthly networking group for Momtrepreneurs at Egg Harbor Cafe. It’s a great breakfast place with locations all around the Chicagoland area. However, with all the roosters and chickens making up the decor inside, I really didn’t expect to see this on their whiteboard:

I loved the creativity and had never seen anyone using their whiteboard at the front of the restaurant for promoting their social media worlds instead of their daily specials. And on their Facebook page are all kinds of fans commenting about the restaurant. (My personal favorite was from a woman who said, “wanted to share that my 3 year old son dreams about your banana bread French toast!”)

It was only a few weeks later that I was in Grand Rapids, MI, where I had dinner at a fabulous tapas restaurant, San Chez. As we waited for a table I noticed a couple signs on a little counter near the hostess stand. One mentioned the fact that they have “Tweet Ahead Seating” which I thought was genius. You just tweet at them with your name and number of people, and they’ll reply with a confirmation. Brilliant! They also had this sign on the table, recognizing the Mayor of their restaurant. It’s one thing to check into Foursquare and know you’re the Mayor of a location, but to actually walk into that place and see your name and Mayorship on display for everyone…come on! That’s just fun! On their website, they take their social media pretty seriously. They have an entire page devoted to all the places you can interact with them online for special offers, and even a free tapa if you check into Foursquare. (Hey, wait a minute…I’m sure I checked in there and I never got my free tapa!)

What I love about all these restaurants engaging with people online is the fact that dining out is a very communal experience. Most often you’re eating with friends or family, and there’s great food and conversation shared (and, if you’re lucky, some amazing Sangria…San Chez has a great recipe!). The fact that these (and many other) restaurants are trying to maintain the communal feeling with people after they’ve left the physical restaurant makes people feel even more connected to the experience they had at that place. It’s a beautiful thing to see social engagement taken to this level. I’m excited to see how other retailers and restaurants participate in the conversation…

Got a good story about a restaurant’s social media menu? I’d love to hear it…

Good marketing involves good storytelling. When you can capture your audience in the middle of a great story, they jump in with both feet, listening intently to what you might have to say next, and looking for ways they can become part of your story.

Remember “The Neverending Story” from back in the 80s? (I know, I’m dating myself here…) It epitomized what a captivating story can do in the mind of a child. Remember how the boy, Bastian, found himself in the story–actually experiencing it with all the characters, feeling the excitement and danger–as he eventually took on the role of the hero? When I watched that movie as a kid, I remember wishing I had a book that became that real for me, that sucked me into an alternate reality and let me be part of the story the way Bastian was part of The Neverending Story.

Now jump ahead a few decades. What stories have you found yourself wanting to be in the middle of these days? Is there a company or person whose story is playing out in a way you wish you could be a part of? It’s a whole new world today. With social media and marketing the way it is, you can actually become part of the story. On Facebook or Twitter, you can reply to the stories that are engaging to you. On YouTube, not only can you watch the stories on video, but you could even respond with your own video story. On any blog post you find interesting, you can reply, or even Tweet the post for the rest of the world to see, placing you in the story in a unique way. And with the life that viral stories take on as they resurface on different videos or blogs or Twitter pages, it really can be a Neverending Story that you become part of.

Movie studios have started to figure this out. When the new Johnny Depp movie, “Public Enemies,” was first releasing, Universal Studios brought audiences into the story by using Twitter and Facebook to invite people to rob a bank. And just the other day, the Twitter user @importantdate showed up, hinting at a tea party somewhere around Comic-Con in San Diego, starting the buzz about the latest Tim Burton/Johnny Depp creation, “Alice in Wonderland” (which doesn’t even release until March 2010!), and getting other Tweeps to link to the trailer, thus bringing them into the story and furthering the marketing efforts with very little work on the part of the studio (assuming the studio is behind the Twitter profile).

Other businesses are getting customers involved an experience that invites people to contribute their own content, which essentially becomes free advertising and promotions for the company. Take Chipotle for instance. On MyChipotle, customers can upload videos or photos explaining their unique creations they order at Chipotle. Some of the videos they have there are entertaining enough and of a good enough quality to actually be a commercial for Chipotle, and it cost them nothing to make. Everyday people engage in the storytelling, which is truly marketing for Chipotle. Even the Presidential campaign for Barack Obama benefitted from this kind of experience with my.BarackObama.com, where they invited people to share their own story of hope during the campaign, and gave them social media tools and outlets where they could essentially build their own site to tell their story, explain why they were supporting Obama, and encourage others to do the same. (No matter where you stand politically, from a marketing and social media perspective you have to give props to the Obama campaign for their use of social media! For some insights into how the Obama campaign used digital media to win supporters, and ultimately the election, check out this article.)

I think we’re looking at a phenomenon that could be dubbed “Social Story Marketing.” It’s a social web and a story-driven culture in which we find ourselves living and working today. So if good marketing involves good storytelling, and the social media provides a platform for storytelling that engages audiences on a new level, why wouldn’t we start looking at what we do as Social Story Marketing? I’m going to explore this concept a little deeper over the next few posts, but in the meantime, think about your product or business…what would it look like to engage audiences in Social Story Marketing?

While at the MediaBistro Circus last week, we heard more than one presenter talk about Twitter. Not only that, we heard more than one (probably even more then two or three) of those presenters share case studies of Twitter being used as a customer service outlet. I’m pretty sure we saw the ComcastCares guy or the Ford guy in a few different presentations. The point of each was that Twitter, for a lot of people, is becoming the face of a company. It can serve as the only place where the public can connect with someone who has a face and actually responds to their needs. (And while Scott Monty of Ford is actually a marketing and social media guy, his presence really does serve a customer service role as he represents Ford as a human with a sense of humor and an understanding of the market.)

I watched the Tony Awards the other night, and followed along on Twitter for a good portion of the show. The magic of the hashtag (#) makes following a live feed fascinating. The whole time, my husband and I kept saying, “I hope the producer is watching the Twitter feed…maybe they’ll get it into gear.” But after seeing yet another boom mic in a shot, or hearing more sound issues, it appeared that nobody in the production booth was aware that somewhere outside the walls of the Radio City Music Hall was an audience of people with valid feedback and insight into how the production was appearing on the screens in their living rooms. Now granted, if I were that producer, I may not really have time to care what all those people think. But how much more would people offer their loyalty to a person, brand, or organization when they feel that their observations, complaints, or grievances were not only heard, but were actually responded to! The reality is, businesses need to be far more aware of the life their company takes on in the social media realm. Their ignorance can be just as detrimental as their lack of response. In fact, Jeff Howe, author of “Crowdsourcing,” tweeted today, “Delta customer service=FAIL. How badly? So bad I bet they never read this tweet.”

Beyond the customer service aspect of the business world and Twitter lies the simple fact that Twitter can improve a business. Take this article from the Wall Street Journal. While some companies are still wondering why on earth they should bother with Twitter, others are figuring out how to use it to their own advantage:

New technology has been a game changer, allowing trucks to pick and move to where the customers are on short notice. Kogi BBQ, a truck serving Korean-barbecued meat inside Mexican-style tacos in Los Angeles, became a media sensation earlier this year in part for its use of Twitter, on which it currently has 28,000 followers. Following Kogi’s example, more truck operators have begun using Twitter to post messages on followers’ cell phones, alert customers of their whereabouts and even ask for tips on parking spaces.

Imagine how Twitter could change your business. (And you really should consider this.) Whether it’s giving a face to your company, connecting customers directly to your brand, or making your business a little easier, why wouldn’t you be all a-Twitter?