Twitter and iPhone - this is not about a gadget.

So last week I "tweeted" that I was planning to finally buy an iPhone after years of being a Nokia fan... and here's what happened:

1. Several people told me - via Twitter & in a matter of seconds - that I was making a good decision. Although this is not surprising looking at the amount of hype and brand awareness this phone received over the last year I was a bit overwhelmed... Never received this feedback on the purchase of my last Nokia...)
2. Within minutes I received an tweet saying "If you want to know more about the iPhone..." (iphonicbe @HoratioNelson Als je meer wil weten over iPhone http://twurl.nl/u5il48)
3. So yes I went to that page and registered - it's a well organized iPhone User Group here in Belgium called iPhonic.
4. The next day or so I am figuring out how to synchronize my agenda with my iPhone calendar... I update my status on Twitter and behold... within minutes I receive a message from the user group with a couple of relevant links related to my question...
   

Since then I am amazed at the speed of response and service from this group...

But that's not the point I wanted to make... The thing is, this experience has shown me hands on how customer service and support, as well as brandperception, can be created by the use of social media like Twitter.

The speed, relevance and "personal" approach is very powerfull.

How about you ?

Are you using social media to create a better relationship with your clients and/or business partners ?

Some of these companies do exactly that.

Technorati Tags: twitter, iphone, nokia, iponic, social media, customer support,

Comments

[Fredegre]

An interesting eperience. Too bad there aren't many companies like Apple that generate such enthusiasm among their customers/users that they make the kind of efforts you mention above. Btw, a great source of companies that use Twitter can be found at http://twibs.com.

[Dennis D. McDonald]

The flip side of this is that for every one committed user group doing this there are ten spam-oriented groups using Twitter in a similar fashion. That's too bad. I don't know what the solution is other than to close up the networking groups.