Maybe the tipping point for large companies and social media has now been reached, with 82% of the Fortune Global 100 companies now averaging around 27 tweets per week – Twitter is the most active among the activities covered, which also include blogging, posting to Youtube and updating Facebook.

Revealed in a survey by Burson-Marsteller, 20% of companies are using all four of the ‘main’ social networking options. And the 27 tweets per week compares with 3.6 wall posts on Facebook as an average.

It’s great that leading companies are finally starting to use social media in the right way, with companies following an average of 731 people, and 38% actively responding to tweets. And 32% have re-tweeted or reposted user comments in the last seven days.

There’s a PDF of the full report available.

A guest post by Lauren Fisher, who specialises in online PR and social media at Simply Zesty – and can be found on Twitter at @laurenfisher.
As we look forward to a brand new year, I’m sure the burning question on everyone’s lips is – what’s going to happen to microblogging in 2010? In a year that saw Ashton Kutcher reach 1 million followers on Twitter and MSN launch their own microblogging service (and MSN China clone Plurk – Dan), the next year certainly has a lot to live up to. Here, I offer a few of my own predictions for microblogging in 2010, with Dan’s thoughts below.

Increased use in organisations

I’m talking here about internal use of microblogging, as a way for colleagues to collaborate and communicate with each other. We’ve seen Google Wave emerge as a tool for professional, organisational use and I think this is the path that microblogging will take in 2010. I’ve already written on here about my thoughts on Yammer (which I still stand by) and I think we will see microblogging tools play a bigger role in internal corporate communications, as an easy and efficient way to communicate with each other. The benefits of realtime will be no more paramount than for businesses.

Dan: Totally agree, although I’m not sure I’d pick Yammer out as the key product in this area – the move is towards integrating microblogging as part of a collaborative and project management toolset – e.g. Salesforce Chatter. The novelty of an ‘internal Twitter’ is fine, but doesn’t convert those who don’t like Twitter, or those happy to DM via Twitter already. Integrated tools give reasons for people to get involved.

Twitter Declining

I won’t be the first, or last, person to say this but I think Twitter may have reached its height of popularity and I think numbers will start to dwindle, albeit slowly. The love affair with Twitter has been exciting, but it might just be over. The avalanche of spam accounts has a part to play here, but I think that when Twitter reaches its highest point of saturation, is conversely when you start to lose value in the site. It has become incredibly noisy and I am beginning to question the real use of it.

Dan: I agree to some extent. I think some of the expansion already has been down to a huge number of spam accounts, and it’s something Twitter has started to tackle, but will always be a huge problem. The lesson here is to learn from the most popular 3rd party apps – Tweetdeck and Seesmic for example, which allow far better filtering than Twitter itself. The noise levels don’t bother me too much because I’m fairly selective about who I follow (Hard to believe when I’m following almost 2k people!)

Microblogging as customer service

I think that more and more companies will embrace microblogging in 2010, beyond the extent we’re seeing now. Businesses will realise the potential of microblogging as a customer service platform though, rather than a place for sexy social media campaigns. I don’t think there will be many more hashtag competitions, we’ve had pretty much every variation of these! I hope that more companies will realise the value of microblogging to source and, most importantly, solve issues for customers. As consumers, we are expecting everything to be solved in real-time and this is what we’ll expect businesses to cater to. The power of crowdsourcing will also be recognised more and we’ll see more companies opening up product development to the masses.

Dan: Totally agree that almost every company should be using Twitter as an integral part of overall improvements to customer service. I expect to reach any tech company via Twitter, and those that do have an active role tend to respond quickly and get my repeat business!

No to video microblogging

It’s not an area that’s really taken off and I don’t think 2010 will be the year for video microblogging. Some sites have made a good attempt, such as Vidly, but once the initial shine wears off the uptake is slow. I simply don’t think that microblogging lends itself to video. A quick text update is one thing : shooting, uploading and tagging a short video is another. We’re still not as comfortable in front of the camera as we are in front of the keyboard and I don’t think this will change any time soon.

Dan: Damn it – this is an area that comes back to haunt me after I made a prediction on video at a conference that Seesmic’s original video blogging platform would take off in 2009. And I was wrong for exactly the reasons above. I’d say for the over 20s, audio blogging such as Audioboo is more accessible. However, I think there’s a huge group of teenagers who are very accustomed to broadcasting themselves on Justin.tv and Ustream. If someone taps into that market and can lure them away from sites which are heavily integrating with Facebook, Twitter etc, then we may see video microblogging take off in a couple of years. It’s also likely to be primarily mobile, and the odds are people will still video other people rather than themselves…

Location –based microblogging

If Twitter is to continue growing in 2010, I think the answer could be in location-based services. As mobile internet usage rapidly increases, we’re all going to be using location services more. If we can make real connections on Twitter with those that are physically close to us, as a more integrated part of the whole microblogging experience, this could prove incredibly popular. Integrating tweets at real-world events such as concerts and sport events will also become more popular, bringing people physically together.

Dan: Totally. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more integration between location, microblogging and special offers, but that’s definitely going to arrive this year – look at mobile social location games like Foursquare, or Google stepping up their location-based efforts. And events are a huge influence on bringing people together on Twitter – the FA Cup, the Superbowl, Eurovision etc as examples…

Integration with sites

As more people will be moving away from Twitter itself, I think microblogging will play a bigger part in existing sites. The new redesign of LinkedIn sees the now familiar stream of status updates with more prominence and I think this is probably the way many sites will go, including email services, encouraging even further interaction between people through short updates. As we become increasingly productive online in 2010, we’ll expect the microblogging functionality to feature more heavily in sites we’re already visiting, than having to go to a separate site.

Dan: Twitter, Facebook and Google are the three services that you should expect to seemlessly be integrated into almost every site you visit in the next 6 months. Each one is becoming very close to the single unified ID many people have talked about…

Microblogging in 2010 – what do you think?

A couple of interesting posts have highlighted both the positive and negative of the increase in customer service by brands on Twitter.

Andrew Grill has written a detailed account of his dealings with British Telecom in a post titled ‘Why call centres need to embrace Twitter and IM for customer support’. In it, he details a familiar bad experience with an endless chain of Interactive Voice Response systems and staff.

In the midst of it he contacted @BTCare who directed him to the helpline, but the eventual solution came from the section of BT.com which offers an interactive chat service with an advisor.

Meanwhile Dave Winer writes ‘Sorry I still hate Comcast’ – critical of the company which has received plaudits for using Twitter effectively to reach out as a customer service tool – in Dave’s case they couldn’t stop him getting ‘fired as a Comcast customer’ and offended him even more by telling him that they liked him during the process. Which is why Dave now prefers to avoid being cut off or dealing with Twitter reps for his AT&T account.

I’m not sure it’s about the tools being used, or even the amount of resource directed to each one (Andrew suggests that the 7 people he spoke to via the phone would have been better served monitoring places like Twitter etc).

I’m fairly sure it’s about customer service people being helpful and having the authority to solve problems etc proactively, whether that’s via the phone or Twitter.

It’s important to be in the place customers want to reach you, and equally important in the modern internet age to be monitoring for those people who might have a problem that they announce to others without contacting you directly.

But being aware of a customer’s problem doesn’t solve it.

I’ve had good experiences with some companies via Twitter – for example the chap who was running www.twitter.com/godaddyguy was incredibly helpful when I had hosting problems. He chased for answers, emailed, and even offered to call to ensure the problem was resolved – and all this was in the same time as it took to get a cursory email response via their online help service.

Partly, Twitter is a great tool for customer service, because it’s easy for companies to monitor, and quick for customers to use to share information, praise and complaints.

But partly, I think, the most proactive customer service people are eager and excited by using new technologies like Twitter, so you’ll tend to find more helpful people on there than in the call centre hiring whoever they can at the most cost-efficient wage.

I think we’re a long way from Twitter, Get Satisfaction etc replacing call centres – but I can’t wait for the day they do because it will enable everyone to highlight the proactive, useful, customer service staff from the bad far more easily, and mean that everyone gets a better service no matter who they’re dealing with.

What the experts say

Today, Joel Postman posted on corporate twittering at SocialMediaToday He makes some good points – the first being that we should know the site is official and another is that the corporate twitters must be empowered to help the consumers.

My experience of customer service via Twitter

I planned today to follow my previous post about the apparent pointlessness of corporate micro-blogging. One of the things I was going to say was that my experience of corporate twittering is negative. A rep comes back to you and says “what is the problem?” . I waste time replying and that is the last I hear of them. So certainly, if corporate twitters can do something for me, I am persuaded. Otherwise, I don’t think Joel’s suggestions go far enough.

Twitter as crowd sourcing

In the post I had prepared before I read Joel’s article, I was going to liken twittering to crowd sourcing. Crowd sourcing has three important features:

• Anything we do is small, easy and completely repeatable.
• Anything we do is redundant – the show will go on without us.
• Any useful outcome of crowd sourcing could have been generated from any one of the crowd.

Twiitter fits the crowd source model well. When people recount the benefits, they almost always say they get solutions to problems – not from specific people but from anyone who happens to the be listening. Sometimes you get a solution and sometimes you don’t.

Having a customer rep scanning for messages and trying to answer them quickly and effectively is a different model entirely.

Barack Obama’s nifty use of Twitter

Barack Obama’s use of Twitter exploits its broadcast facility. No one answers if you reply with DM! A normal reply takes you in one click to the speech that he is making at the minute. Next to the videocast are four buttons, encouraging you to take action for his campaign in one of four easy clicks. That is a good use of the “minute action” model of crowd sourcing.

Corporate use

I haven’t seen any other corporate use that is any good at all. We may love Twitter, but we won’t be thanked for trying to use it to do what it can’t.

What I would try if I had to!

If I was using Twitter for customer service, I would reply automatically to any Tweet about my company, with a link taking to the customer service line. Then would link up the customer service line to txting, email, DM, Skype, so my customer can communicate quickly with whatever medium they have to hand.

Twitter would come the opposite of ‘broadcast’. It would be a listening post where I can find customers having hassles and move them to a channel where I can help them.

Positive feedback

I might have one rep scanning for Tweet’s that are positive and reply publicly thanking them for the compliment! That should be contagious! It would be a great experiment if any corporate would like to try it?

PS Joel, when will SocialMediaToday fix its comments so we can participate. Notice 0 comments, so it is not just me, I think.

Dan’s Note:

Further to corporate Twitter accounts, there are some which have started working in the way Jo describes, using the likes of Twitter search to monitor for mentions of a company or product and then responding. They include Comcast, Dell, Zappos, Qik. There’s a list of all brands on the Fluent Simplicity blog, and we’re compiling our own list – hopefully building on this by separating the good and bad, and listing case studies which show how Twitter and microblogging should, and shouldn’t be used. You can see the Business Case Studies for microblogging and Twitter here.