When it comes to simple Twitter management, there is a whole host of tools and services you can use. However, before you start to glorify the abundance of the web, you should consider that there are just two prominent tools, CoTweet and HootSuite, specifically designed to help you manage the customer service element of your business. This is not to say that they do not fill the space well, because both are quite effective as Twitter Power-tools, in their own ways.

With more and more companies arming themselves with a quiver full of potent arrows named Twitter, you must be eager to fire your shots before others can. Both CoTweet and HootSuite can help you do this. Nevertheless, before you can decide which of the two tools can serve you best, maybe you should know about the things that both of them offer you.

Whether you use CoTweet or HootSuite, you can:

• Manage as many accounts as you want. Remember that in Twitter-space, the rule is ‘the more the merrier’! You do not have to manage all the accounts yourself and instead provide access to some of the accounts to suitable people in your organization.
• Use both tools to retain password access to all your accounts, because the other users chosen by you simply have to use their CoTweet or Hootsuite logins to use their assigned accounts and interact with customers on behalf of your business.
• Use multiple editors and search for keywords quickly and efficiently.
• Get notified as soon as you receive a message on any of your accounts.
• Program both CoTweet and Hootsuite to send out posts at a designated time later in the day or week. This can be really helpful if you are looking to run a blitzkrieg marketing campaign.

You may also be happy to know that both these tools are free (for now that is).

Okay, but, before you start thinking that these two tools are clones of each other, here’s a brief look at both right now.

If you use CoTweet, you can look forward to:

• A sleek user-interface, boosted by detailed texture. The homepage is nothing much to write about but the spacious layout more than makes up for it!
• Referring to your archived Tweets as and when necessary. You can also create lists and save searches that are easily accessible at any point of time.
• Assign someone in your organization to be the ‘On Duty’ tweeter. This ensures that your business is alive and well on Twitter, throughout working hours. In addition, the Twitter-bugs in your company do not need to waste time in checking their Twitter accounts throughout the day!
• Adding a personal touch to your Twitter posts. If you feel that the posts should be credited to the person making them on behalf of your organization, you can use CoTags. These are short signatures (usually initials) which can be set up to appear automatically along with every post. In hindsight, if you make it a must for every tweeter in your organization to use CoTags, they might be a lot more responsible with the content of their posts!

But there are some downsides to CoTweet too.

• CoTweet does not support Facebook, which may be a vital element of your social media efforts. Social media is not just about Twitter, and the sooner the makers do something to incorporate Facebook usage, the better.
• Finding specific tweets can be tough, particularly when you are in a hurry.
• If you are looking for something within the searches you have saved, you may find it hard to obtain results for specific operators such as ‘near’ or ‘within’ a place. For such geographically specific searches, you have to refer to search.twitter.com repeatedly.

Now that you know a fair bit about the pros and cons of Cotweet, let us take closer look at HootSuite as well! Here are some of Hootsuite’s key features that deserve two thumbs ups and no less:

• If you like multifunctional tools, you will love HootSuite. It allows you to manage Facebook, Ping.fm, and LinkedIn in addition to Twitter. To top it off, you can plug in WordPress blogs and any RSS feed of your choice into HootSuite streams. There is hardly an easier way to promote your blogs through Twitter and Facebook!
• To complete the social media bouquet, HootSuite gives you an iPhone application to post, search and even check user stats.
• Talking about user stats, HootSuite provides you the deepest and most intricate data you may ever need! Use the URL shortener ow.ly to get to know stuff such as who are the most influential re-tweeters of your links.
• You can customize the entire process of profile management by adding and removing columns from the different tabs representing the profiles you are managing. If you want, you can also add more columns for content such as Twitter lists, searches and keywords.
• The HootLet is a mini-bookmark system unique to HootSuite. Marking your favorite sites for tweeting can be really easy thanks to this feature.
• You can start or stop following people on twitter via HootSuite whenever you wish. With the click of a button, you can report spammers to Twitter HQ for appropriate action.

Even though the above mentioned features of Hootsuite sound great, you should keep in mind some of its downsides as well:

• The iPhone app works for Twitter only. For the rest you have to log in to the website. Moreover, the app costs you an extra $2, which makes it a paid service feature.
• More than one person in your organization can access HootSuite, but there are no such features as the ‘tweet assignment’ and ‘on duty’ ones in as is the case of CoTweet.
• Specific searches do not seem to work here either.

In conclusion, while both are great tools meant to empower you while engaging in social media customer service, CoTweet is perhaps the better choice if you run a business with some employees to assist you in your social media efforts.

On the other hand, if you want to keep your social media cards close to your chest, HootSuite may serve you best with its better layout and simple interface. If you want to choose one, what you need to do is to take a look at your organization’s needs and the facilities at your disposal for social media customer service and making the right choice suddenly won’t seem so hard after all!

The biggest question for any marketer is where do I get new ideas to keep the market buzzing about the products? So, here are some tips that might help you: -

1) Innovation/Research Team – If your company has a innovation team then, ask them to bring some ideas giving them the business objective.

2) Vendors - Speak to your vendors and ask them to to provide input on things they are seeing in the market. The more business for you means more business for them, so they will work hard for you.

3) Consultants - Your marketing consultants are a great resource for getting ideas that can create buzz in the market. Again, this should not be the only job your consultants have and good way to test their creativity.

4) Employees - Unleash the power of your employees, they deal with customers and come from all different perspectives. Make it easy for them to share their ideas with your team and watch how you will more ideas than you can handle….that takes me to my next point – prioritize the ideas.

5) Customers - You better believe it!!! They are your best friends (if not, then, that’s another problem) and when asked, they will provide you insights that your team might have missed.

6) Diversity - Get people from different teams and ask them to provide ideas for your marketing objective. The real way to innovate is to have people from all walks of life come together to form, storm, norm and perform and finally come up with great value ideas for you.

So, the point is that ideas are generated by people and where you have any relationship with people, it’s an opportunity  for you to get ideas. So, what are you waiting for go out there and starting talkin’ cause it’s better to be in business of prioritizing ideas then finding them.

One of the biggest challenges for businesses is this how to delight the customers. The answer can be pretty simple or it can be quite complicated.

A delight in the simplest terms is something that you do for your customers which is unexpected.

Just to give you an example I had a Hotel booking in Houston and as I was driving down to the Houston airport from San Antonio as a friend had to catch a flight. I saw a lot of traffic and being new to Houston, I thought of calling my only option i.e. America’s Best Value Inn (I am not paid to write this) where I was going to stay for the night. The owner, Manny Patel, picked up the phone and and understood my problem and started giving me directions for an alternate route to the airport. Also, he took my number and called me back to inform me that why there was a delay in the current route and the alternate route also had a lot of traffic, and it seems like the traffic should clear up in 10-15 minutes so I should stay put on my route. Lo behold, it was true and  the traffic cleared and I was able to reach on time for the flight.  You bet I was delighted !!!

I’ve also heard of cases there that Zappos employees received calls asking for pizza, and they actually ordered pizza for those people and of course what happens is that person is delighted and goes out to blog about it, tweets and put a picture of the delivered Pizza on their Facebook page.

This shows that anytime you do the unexpected for your customers, they will do the return the favor and do the unexpected for you.  Great customer service, wonderful product & services etc. are expected now and not a rue delight !!  and most of the companies would say that they do that all the time but is just the other aspect of truly believing your customers and helping them out in the area that maybe is not related to your business will create the buzz for you.

A gift or coupon in their mail, special store discount, or just some fun stuff that you can send online or off-line that makes them feel closer to your company are the opportunities you need to be looking for.

As companies like Procter and Gamble started using social networking for promoting their products, there was an obvious question in the minds of marketing fraternity- will it really work? While no one can claim the degree of success they achieved through this media, no one would deny the fact that social networking gives an effective tool of brand promotion and image building.

Today’s customer is not ready to listen even for a moment what a company has to say. They are however ready to write and read what their experience was with a particular brand. They share something they value and not what they just noticed. They are not static in what they see thus it is not easy to grab attention with a simple advertisement. They are definitely not going to give a heed to what you are saying. Hence one needs to make them listen what they want to listen.

This situation gave rise to a situation where an advertisement describing your product might not be able to sell your product on its own. Marketing fraternity needs to know what people value. People do value a brand. A brand is what they think your company or product is. Hence it is necessary to strengthen the brand image.

Earlier a brand image was in control of the company. However the changing face of marketing shows that more and more brands are looking for participative social spaces. Companies are targeting spaces in the webpages of sites like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter to create resonance regarding their own product. They are banking on eye-catching videos posted on YouTube or a game on Facebook.

The companies which are using social networking sites for brand promotion are somewhere losing control on their brands in order to grab customers’ attention. This might sound frightening to a company which is yet to plunge into using social media for marketing or brand promotion. However social media is all about sharing and not controlling. It has brought an era of brand sharing. Social networking sites have become a major crowd puller and other companies are looking at gaining spotlight at their effort.

Opinion polls and reports say that there is a group of visitors who say that they go to Facebook to get in touch with their friends and relatives and not the brands. However, there is another group of people who readily agree that they are able to get benefits from the promotional videos and ads posted on these sites. Hence there is a fairly good opportunity for all the marketers.