Social media is an essential tool for data centres. It enables you to put a human face on your company, engage with customers, draw in the right people to your website, and even deal with disgruntled customers quickly and effectively. So who is doing this well in the data centre world at the moment? To kick off our series, here are our top ten picks for those doing Twitter right.
Verizon engages in two-way conversations via Twitter. When you look at Verizons Twitter feed, it doesnt make much sense. Bad? No, good. It means that Verizon is engaged in a lot of conversations. In other words, the company is not simply broadcasting, but also reacting to what others are saying. Its tweets are funny, sharp, and often liked and retweeted. Its success is reflected in its 1.6m followers, and over 6,000 likes in a single month.
Rackspace shares blog content to steer customers to its website. Rackspaces Twitter feed is coherent and consistent. Messages are shared in a gently deprecating and humorous way. It is clear where the companys expertise lies, but that is shared in a way that is not in your face. Rackspace also regularly tweets links to blog posts, with a good summary to make clear who would be interested. It too gets plenty of likes and has a lot of followers.
Proximus is quick to respond to customer comments and complaints. Proximus Twitter feed is run in at least three languages (French, Dutch and English), which makes it a challenge for whoever is running it, at the very least! But despite that, the company is quick to respond to customers airing problems, tweeting back to find out what the problem is, and taking it offline via messaging (always good practice). Mistakes by Proximus staff (such as a retweet instead of reply to a complaint) are acknowledged immediately and managed with humour.
CoreTX (formerly C4L) provides a range of interesting content via social media. There is lots to look at and read on CoreTXs Twitter feed. Pictures, blog content, news about directors, events, and charity work, and content from key influencers, are all proof that variety is not only the spice of life, but also draws in the punters. CoreTX punches above its weight in likes: it has fewer followers than many other providers, but gains nearly as many likes as followers!
Good content works across languages, as Dinahosting demonstrates. Data centre providers tend to tweet in their home language. Not surprising, really, because that is what most of their customers speak and read. But good content will work across languages, and Dinahosting is happy to share English-language content as well as Spanish, when it knows that the article provides useful information for its customers.
aql uses its Twitter feed to promote its charity work, and humanise the company. As well as information about attendance at events, and how aql can help its partner businesses to achieve, the company also uses its Twitter feed to promote its charity work. Recent fundraising activity has included fundraising for a hospice (complete with arresting the CEO and using JustGiving to raise his bail) and a Macmillan coffee morning. This puts a human face on a company in a business that is often fairly impersonal.
CenturyLink uses different social media accounts to segment its customers. One of the great things about social media is that you can use different accounts to target slightly different groups of customers. CenturyLink does this very effectively via both geographical accounts (such as EMEA) and subject ones (such as CenturyLink Business).
Green Mountain Energy uses Twitter to emphasise its unique selling point. Green Mountain Energys USP is its environmental credentials. It is the longest serving renewable energy retailer in the US, and it uses Twitter to promote not only its own credentials, but advice about ways in which customers can save the planet in large and small ways.
Twitter is a good way to share success stories, as Pulsant UK shows. There is nothing quite as effective as a success story. A customer happy enough to be used in marketing tells its own story, and Twitter offers the potential to share this kind of success far and wide, as Pulsant UKs Twitter feed makes very clear.
BrightSolid shares information about event attendance By doing so, it encourages its customers to come and chat if they too are on site, and to engage in conversations about what is being said at events if they are not. It is another way to engage with customers, and adds variety to a Twitter feed.