I know everyone is talking about twitter lately, UK media got a hold of it; the rest of the internet has known of it for quite some time. Since some are still trying to figure out what the point of it is (no names), I thought I would share a case of how to put it to great use.

This weekend I went to groovesharks website to listen to some music while working. Unfortunately I was met by a holding page saying Bear with us, showing a cute image of a panda gnawing on cables, a lewd comment in very faint font colour. A message then explained to me that the site was down for scheduled maintenance and an explanation as to why this was all happening.

Now some would take this at face value, fair enough they needed to move servers etc. But we all know that online some people feel like they are god and should be treated as such. Therefore they slander brands at their privy. This can of course be extremely detremental to brands, with no way of protecting themselves. Or can they?

Yes they can
Also included on the holding page was a twitter feed with Maintenance Updates. This enabled groveshark to open a potential dialogue with frustrated and of course purely curious users. Keeping a dialogue with your customer/userbase can be very crucial to keeping and building trust.

So what does this mean?
Instead of turning to their blogs or own twitter accounts complaining about groveshark being down the whole weekend and having bad service (these people always exagerate), they where invited to take part in the whole thing live. The server people and Groveshark staff where twittering through the whole event, showing pictures of the new servers being installed. People where asking questions and started engaging with the brand. The downtime was only a few hours and I bet you can’t find any slander on the web about the latest upgrade from Grooveshark.

Cost of all this (servers not included)
can’t be much more then an iPhone and webaccess. Whereas the value to the brand is immeasurable. Building customer relations is a long road uphill, loosing that trust is one trip of the foot.

Below is a screnshoot of the page in question:
first image

If you have other great examples of how twitter has been used as a marketing tool in slightly unconventional ways, please comment below.