Doing business in the age of Twitter

“Before Twitter, if you had a disgruntled customer, they were hidden in your call centre queue. Now they have a voice that anyone can hear."   

He recommends that business leaders ask themselves:

• what is being said online about my business?
• what are my risk minimisation strategies for dealing with social media?
• what additional resources are required for social media?
• do I have an open culture that listens and responds to customers?

But damage limitation is not the only reason business people are engaging with social media applications like Twitter. They also provide cost-effective opportunities to market products and services - particularly for exporters .

They not only build engagement with customers online but also provide opportunities to gain customers’ feedback and suggestions. Forrester Research predicts that in five years’ time in the US, spending on social media marketing will quadruple from $716 million this year to $3.113 billion in 2014.

Some New Zealand exporters have been active in social media for a number of years. Mario Wynands, managing director and co-founder of Wellington-based videogame production studio Sidhe, says his company engaged so successfully with online rugby league communities back in 2003 that 35,000 copies of its first rugby league game were pre-ordered.

“We set a record for pre-orders and sales, before any actual advertising was done,” Wynands says.

His catalyst was a presentation by Canadian game developer Ray Myzuka of Bioware. “He said it’s not only the experience of your team, your concept and your prototype but, additionally, your online community that now makes a business proposition.”

Sidhe has a Facebook page, YouTube channel and Twitter feed. It also hosts forums on its own website network, participated in by 8,500 people who have contributed three-quarters of a million message posts.

Sidhe also takes part in other computer games forums. Wynands is a keen participant, along with four staff, and finds it hard to quantify the time spent on social media. “I like engaging. Work blends into free time.

“Social media combined with PR is almost 100 percent of our total marketing. We don’t do paid advertising – it’s very expensive and, in an online world, it’s increasingly hard to see the benefits from it.”

Sidhe uses social media to distribute product information, post links and get feedback for future games development. “People sign up because they want to bring good news to their own communities.”

Wynands maintains perspective about comments posted about his company’s games.

“People in forums tend to be ‘hard core’ – they respond very positively or very negatively. You take the comments as indicative but have to dig further to find prevailing opinion.”