BigPond to talk gaming on Twitter
Telstra’s BigPond is to continue its experiment in social media by inviting followers to talk to one of the brand’s gaming experts via Twitter in a live conversation on Friday lunchtime.
The experiment was revealed today in a blog posting from Telstra’s senior adviser on social media Mike Hickinbotham.
Telstra has been holding consultations with the online communuity about the kinds of conversation the telco should be having. It follows a backlash against BigPond’s first venture into Twitter which was perceived by some to be too formulaic.
In today’s posting Hickinbotham says that a survey of users of Twitter found that 63.8% did not want to receive commercial messages via Twitter. He says:
“As a result of confirming this commonly held belief, we’ve had a number of internal discussions around how we package non-customer care information to the community. We think non customer care based information needs to be communicated like a designer label – it needs to be informative, relevant and succinct.”
He said: “This Friday during lunch at 12noon, (6 March 2009) we have Jason Sexton from BigPond games who will be sitting with our Twitter team answering gaming questions and offering information that could improve the BigPond gaming experience of the Twitter community.”
The conversation can be followed via the hashtag #bpt. Hickinbotham’s Twitter ID is @M_Hickinbotham. Mumbrella’s is @mumbrella.
(Commercial message from Mumbrella: Mike Hickinbotham will present a case study in how Telstra uses Twitter at the Mumbrella Masterclass in social media as a marketing tool, which takes place in Sydney on April 22. The early bird discount expires this Friday. Details here)
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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“sitting with our Twitter team”
Let him set up his own ID and do it himself. Not a fan of corporations setting up an artificial barrier (e.g., “Twitter team” as a go-between”) when attempting to do something like this.
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I have to disagree with the comment above. It’s not factually accurate.
The Twitter team is enabling access. Access that wasn’t possible before the @BigPondTeam account.
Mike Hickinbotham
Telstra’s Social Media Senior Advisor
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Jeez Uncle Buck,
Give em a break. How many brands are even doing this much?
You can bet your life they’ve got giant internal hurdles to get this far.
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