Word of Mouth

I had just discovered a great post by Agatha about how Translink is using Twitter to connect to their users.

I must say that I share her excitement. Translink’s official twitter page has a majority of replies. When they are making announcements  they always make sure to hashtag #RiderAlert. So I looked though a few pages of the tweets to see how are commuters’s taking advantage of this service.

1. Questions about services, mostly buses not showing up  or breaking down. Translink’s response in this department is so precise and personal. Not to mention the quick speed. Within 3 minutes, Translink avoided a potential frustrating rant and offered good information for the user to make an informed decision.
2. 
3. Positive Feedback: Translink’s tweeter is not about the negative either. This is also a platform that allow people to appreciate the drivers who go out of their way to make our days better.
4. 

Essentially, I am very impressed with what Translink has been able to achieve. Their spokesperson, Erin McNeill gave an interview with October 17 Media about how they use social media. McNeill spoke about an very important issue that I had not previously given any thought.

With so many communication channels available, companies try to push everything through every channel with hope that it would reach as many people as possible. But most people are both on Facebook and Twitter and they are likely to have other social media accounts, they do not want to get the same information repetitively through all the channels. It would probably drive them to unsubscribe. What Translink is doing is target different channels with different messages. Community events on Facebook and live updates only on Tweeter. It keeps people engaged without getting the same message repetitively.