Use twitter to drive sales and learning
I am a big fan of US online retailer Zappos. Founded in 1999 with the goal of becoming the premier destination for online shoes, they have moved well beyond this point both in terms of product offerings and corporate stature. Through their innovative business practices, great customer focus and unique employee engagment methods (they were named as one of America's top 100 companies to work for according to Fortune Magazine in 2009) Zappos now occupy the position of one of the key companies to watch when it comes to developing best practice learning organisations. In this post I want to focus on just one of their innovative practices - their successful use of social media.
Zappos use social media externally to be transparent with consumers and to provide excellent customer service. They use it internally to promote an ongoing dialogue and collaboration between employees. They make particularly prolific use of the micro-blogging tool Twitter, with over 400 employees presently using it. CEO Tony Hsieh leads from the front as the number one user. He uses the blogs to give customers an insight into the company culture and supports them through the sales process. At the same time, he is able to reinforce key messages to employees about company values, vision and expectations through his regular “tweets”.
Zappos provides us with a great case study for the modern learning organisation. They use the collective wisdom from within and tap into prevailing social media to create networks of learning and support, enable creative problem solving and provide opportunities for a kind of collaborative mentoring process. 75% of Zappos business comes from repeat custom. They have therefore keyed into the importance that connectedness plays on both sides of the counter.
If you think twitter is not for you, consider this… it is an inexpensive, mass-communication tool which allows for bite-sizes chunks of information to disseminated quickly to learners all over the world. It also offers a two-way dialogue which helps to make the content more meaningful. When used in combination with other modes of delivery, it can help your learners to quite literally stay connected with what you are teaching, once they leave the classroom. Whilst you only have 140 characters to get your message across, it should be remembered that almost all of the world’s most memorable quotes would fit into this space. As Edward de Bono would say, with simplicity comes focus and the micro-blogging of twitter allows us to drill down this focus, one point at a time! As the old saying goes, “less is more”.
Marc Ratcliffe
CEO, MRWED Group
Follow Me on twitter: @MRWED_CEO