President Obama and his team are well on their way, and millions of people in North America and abroad are curious to know what the first 100 days of the new administration will yield. In the spirit of providing timely insight, I thought it was fitting to write about The Lyris Team's use of Twitter in the first 100 days. By no means am I suggesting that our scope of responsibility and challenges is the same as the U.S. government, but Lyris and President Obama do have one thing in common:

we want to help stimulate business growth, prosperity and value creation through effective strategies and tools for the times.

Enter Twitter, a Web 2.0 phenomenon that is generating a lot of buzz, adoption and some doubt, too. After a brief research and planning phase, Lyris launched its Twitter strategy in December 2008 with a mission to help marketers succeed by providing relevant and timely commentary, ideas, news and tips. In simple terms, Twitter is a direct communications channel for Lyris ambassadors to listen to and engage with customers and non-customers from a broad spectrum of expertise, influence and needs. Further, Twitter provides virtually real-time search results, messaging and automated notifications in the form of the now infamous 140 character limitation, or liberation, depending on your point of view when it comes to blogging.

Lyris is no stranger to social media given that many of our employees have been blogging about marketing topics and best practices on www.LyrisHQ.com and participating in online forums for some time. Twitter and other initiatives also launched on Facebook and LinkedIn during this time period are intended to help us scale our social media and community-building strategy and results by:

• being more accessible, personable and transparent online
• listening to and participating in the groundswell that was written about by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
• committing to a whole new level of engagement, response and value-delivery as a 21st century brand and technology solution provider
• leveraging integrated marketing with tri-messaging as a catalyst for connections and conversations online

Our cross-functional team has learned a lot during the past few months about how to integrate Twitter and other Web 2.0 channels into our business model and service offerings. For example, we recently implemented a new rapid-response process that includes daily monitoring, CRM system updates, escalation, and resource allocation to inform and enable customer service, technical support, product management, marketing, sales and executive teams. Further, we recently announced social media enhancements to our Lyris HQ solution to help marketers and their businesses harness the power of social media as an extension of their email and online marketing programs.

In other words, Twitter and key Web 2.0 channels now play a significant role in how we observe, collaborate, innovate and respond to customer needs and market opportunities with our agile development culture. Social media and networking is part of the world we live, work, play and learn in and ignoring this fact, especially for a technology company like Lyris, is counterproductive to our mission of helping marketers be successful by doing more with less and doing it better.

10 Twitter-Tips for Customer Service, Marketing and Sales Teams

These tips and recommendations may not be for every business, but we’re experiencing good success in the early stage of our strategy as part of a larger community-building initiative:

1) Commit: Twitter and Web 2.0 in general requires that your organization be active vs. passive. This means it’s important to secure executive sponsorship and commitment across the business. It’s true that many of these channels are inexpensive or free to use, but there are costs associated with resourcing and doing social media and networking well. Stay true to your commitment and scale as appropriate as value and velocity increases.

2) Personalize your brand: We recommend a team approach, similar to The Lyris Team on Twitter, because change and impact comes from cross-functional teams, more so than individuals working in silos. Don’t be a faceless corporation behind Twitter -- make sure team members sign their tweets (ie [Erick]) and use photographs, names and titles of each team member. Apply some unique design elements to help convey your brand image and voice, but don’t try to make it an online advertisement; remember it’s a conversation tool.

3) Hone your voice: Be authentic, confident, and factual and add a little sense of humor now and then. Use Twitter to inform, educate and inspire action, not for blatant selling. Avoid being negative, boring or offensive. Twitter, with its 140 character messages, magnifies negative thinking and people. Remember, your tweets are global and impact your personal and corporate brands and reputations.

4) Monitor daily: Twitter is a 24/7 medium with millions of users actively communicating about things like their needs, your brand, competitors, people, events, news, issues, trends, etc. Daily monitoring, with emerging tools or manual searches and scanning, will give you insight into what’s being said about you and your organization, while also giving you the ability to route trouble to the appropriate colleagues. Don’t bury your head in the sand – be aware of key conversations. Implement changes like Lyris’ rapid-response process to assist with intelligence, escalation and resource allocation where and when it matters.

5) Engage customers: Proactively seek out customers on Twitter and follow them, especially if you tune into customer complaints and dissatisfaction. Use Twitter to extend current customer service and CRM processes, but not necessarily replace them. While we don’t encourage or practice “squeaky wheel” or “flaming” messages -- the reality is social media now gives customers and non-customers more power to comment on and influence people about your strengths, weaknesses and mistakes. Don’t ignore constructive feedback - thank customers and non-customers when they offer suggestions and praise.

6) Engage non-customers: Proactively seek out consumers, practitioners, analysts, thought leaders, journalists and influencers in your industry and follow them. However, be patient and don’t follow anyone and everyone just to increase the number of followers and friends on Twitter. Similar to email, we highly recommend an authentic, organic approach where people choose to opt-in to your tweets because of your content, personality and brand equity.

7) Balance frequency and quality: Focus on quality instead of quantity and provide your followers timely and relevant information with links to value, tips, insight, rich media and experiences. Lyris tries to make a least one post per day and we typically do not exceed more than three public tweets in one day. Retweet (RT) others’ good ideas, content and links to help spread their word and create more visibility. Remember to put yourself in your followers’ screens and check for typos before you hit the ‘Update’ button. Followers are busy and probably receive a lot of tweets from others, so try to minimize unnecessary interruptions and noise.

8) Apply tri-messaging: A catalyst for conversations and ROI across multiple channels -- tri-messaging is an integrated marketing best practice which includes messages that are written, packaged, orchestrated and unleashed for email, social and mobile channels. It’s about understanding how your audiences now prefer to engage, interact with and discuss your brands, products, services and issues via a wide variety of channels and conversations online and on-the-go.

9) Use public and direct messages wisely: Twitter provides tools to send public and private messages, but private messages require permission by recipients. We tend to rely more on public messages because private or direct messages via Twitter may be perceived as spam or too personal. As with other forms of relationship-building communications, trust and meaningful engagement should be earned and not assumed.

10) Be visible: Let customers and non-customers know you’re on Twitter and other social networking sites by sharing details via your newsletter , Web site, email signature, webinars, SMS messages, collateral, byline articles, press releases, displays, advertisements, etc. This comes back to your level of commitment. We recommend you focus on doing a few things well and let people know how they can engage with you and your organization on Twitter and other social sites.

What’s Next for Lyris on Twitter?

We will continue to listen to the groundswell and focus on quality conversations and engagement. As value-exchange and velocity increases, we will remain committed to the channel by allocating proportionate resources and we will continue to be creative. The Lyris Team is mindful of being effective and not over-extending the current utility of Twitter and other social sites.

What insight and lessons learned do you have to share from your first 100 days or more? Do tell or simply retweet ours.

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About the Author

Erick Mott is the communications director for Lyris. Connect and collaborate with him on http://twitter.com/lyris and www.linkedin.com/in/erickmott.

Related Resources:

• Subscribe to Inside Lyris HQ our monthly online-marketing newsletter.
• Download free online-marketing guides, tools and webinars in the Lyris Online-Marketing Resource Center.

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