Company names are mentioned in 39 tweets per day

Or approximately 273 tweets mentions per week. As Rand Fishkin the founder of Moz has stated “the quantity of interactions on Twitter may now rival many businesses’ interactions through their customer service teams”

Giving customer service over Twitter is not only becoming a necessary part of a brand’s social media presence but also one forced upon it by a consumer base who sees your unsuspecting brand operating in a public space and thinks “now I’ve got you!”

Engage with any customers directly mentioning your brand using your Twitter handle, whether it’s positive or negative, and listen to what people are saying about your company. If you show a human, easily approachable human face, it will only help your reputation and foster a deeper loyalty in your brand.

As social channels become the most popular way for customers to seek you out for customer support, it’s becoming more important to integrate your customer service teams with your community and social teams. This ensures a unified and consistent tone of voice, where customers aren’t receiving contradictory help from vastly different siloed teams.

31% of tweets containing company names don’t include their Twitter handle

If you’re not monitoring all mentions of your brand name, regardless of whether a user has forgotten to use your Twitter handle or not, you’re potentially missing out on 31% of negative and positive feedback

It’s also important to track all variations and likely misspellings of your brand name too. Followers are not so precious about getting your company’s name right according to your house-style guide as you are.

Only 9% of tweets mentioning companies start with @

Which basically means that 91% of people are talking about you, not to you.

Again, make sure you’re monitoring all mentions of your brand name not just direct mentions, to keep a tab on your brand reputation.

It’s here where your company can surprise Twitter users by appearing agile, creative and happy to help with any flippantly tossed-off complaint in a conversation that isn’t necessarily directed at you.

Here engagement can lead to a surprising win and improve your perception, especially if the conversation is around something negative (if it works for James Blunt it can work for anybody). Just be careful not to come across as being a troll.

60% of tweets mentioning companies don’t get retweeted

On one side, this means you shouldn’t panic if somebody writes a negative tweet about your brand as the chances are it won’t go viral (unless you happen to fail as badly as one of these companies), especially if your team deals with the mention quickly and positively. The key is to avoid escalation.

On the flip-side, it also means that positive mentions of your brand probably won’t get retweeted either. Which means it’s up to you to share positive mentions of your brand. Although try not to do this too often, as it can get tiresome for people already following you.

60% of company mentions will happen when you’re not in the office

In terms of scheduling this means you have to work out the best times to schedule content-based Tweets. For your audience the best times may not necessarily be between 9pm – 5pm on a weekday.

You’ll need a social media manager or member of your social team to be able to react and engage with brand mentions at any time of day, including weekends. This can help to diffuse any possible negative situation that may arise and improve your perception as an ‘always-on, always-approachable’ brand.

It’s also important if you’re scheduling content outside of office hours, that there is somebody on your team ready to engage in real-time with replies or in case anything goes wrong (broken links, typos etc.).