I read articles on blogs nearly every day that offer advice to companies trying to leverage Social Media to reach their customers. Most of it is good advice, and there is certainly tons out there. I have a few of my own opinions formed by a business education mixed with some recent personal experiences. I'm going to focus mainly on my experiences with Twitter. I tweet a LOT. Because I'm always playing with new tools, services, gadgets and gizmos, many of my tweets are about my experiences with those things. I never hesitate to give praise when I have good experiences, and conversely I never hesitate to complain when I find something difficult or buggy. It absolutely blows my mind when representatives from the companies/services in question contact me to try and help to make my experience better.

In the non-digital world, it's often difficult if not impossible to reach real live human beings who have the power to make things better. Additionally, in the non-digital world, I'm a lot LESS likely to call up a company to tell them I didn't like the user experience of their website. With Twitter (and other venues) however, it seems quite commonplace for people to be vocal about their experiences. Those factors alone mean that companies NOT involved in Social Media are missing out on valuable feedback. Here are a few that have made a fan out of me. I hope readers will post their heroes in the comments below.

Some Red Ribbon Winners

Zhiing - I didn't even know what Zhiing was until @grant_at_zhiing sent me a tweet asking me if I'd like to try this social networking application for my Blackberry. Obviously Grant is a savvy fellow and had been scanning twitter for people posting things about their smartphones. This was brilliant targeted marketing. I'll refer you to their website for more information, but I can say that my initial experience with the app on my Blackberry Curve was less than thrilling. It locked up trying to sync up with my GPS system. Grant and I exchanged some emails and he forwarded my issues on to their development team. It made me feel great to know they care so much and it made me feel kind of neat to be able to help them make their service even better. I look forward to future versions! I was very impressed with the way I was engaged.

Qik - After finding out that my Blackberry, now updated with new video firmware, was an acceptable device on the Qik service, I was thrilled. Qik allows you to do live video streaming from your smart phone and I've marveled at many of my peers really taking advantage of this service. I set up my account and began with some test videos. Much to my dismay, I discovered that my video freezes partially through the middle while the sound continues. I initially just assumed it was me/my phone/issues out of my control. In my usual motor-mouthed fashion, I'd tweeted about my experiences on Qik. Imagine my surprise when I was contacted by @broy fro Qik who explained that my problem was some sort of bug having to do with my particular Blackberry model. Per his request, I emailed him the video and he is using my feedback to work with the development team to address the issue! Again, this is simply amazing to me.

BestBuy - I randomly griped one day about the UI experience I was having while searching for something on Best Buy's website. I was soon contacted by somebody whom I assume works on the webdev team asking for specifics and trying to recreate my issue. I admittedly was the weakest link in this particular experience as I never got back to this person, but again - just the fact that my feedback was solicited and I was acknowledged meant the world to me.

And the Mac Daddy Winner of them All - Comcast

Comcast - I know that some readers are groaning, rolling their eyes or muttering in disbelief at this point, but I have to say it. My recent experiences with Comcast changed me from a rabid venom-fuelled Comcast hater to their Number One fan. Why you ask? Well it was via my interactions on Twitter that I fell in love with a support team.

I'm a geek girl. I work from my home. I've been fortunate enough to have a sweet little setup here with many flavors of machine, operating system and peripheral. Since a lot of the work I do is over VPN, a reliable internet connection is crucial to everything I do. Enter – Comcast High Speed Internet. Overall, I've been happy with my service, but dealing with tech support has always been a nightmare. I've had techs out here who did not know the difference between internal and external IP addresses for instance. I have also had them out here who fed me a load of crap. I've gone through the endless hours of being on hold and condescended to by support reps on the phone who made me go through their script when I was trying to tell them I already KNEW the problem. I HATED calling them for any reason - hated it. Fortunately, the service was mostly up.. mostly. Of course, when things go sideways for me, they go way sideways. Thus is the case with my recent conundrum. The problem began about 3 months ago. My connection was dropping intermittently. I called tech support and we went through our usual gyrations. Things were ok until about a month later when it began doing the same thing – just disconnecting me and causing me to have to reset the gateway. I could not work. This was driving me crazy After whining about it on Twitter one of the wonderful Comcast guys, Frank Eliason (@comcastcares on Twitter) contacted me and asked me how he could help. He enlisted the help of of one his team, @ComcastBill and those two singlehandedly saved the universe. Well ok, they saved my sanity. We stayed in contact via phone, email and of course via Twitter and over the next 10 days (yes it was 10 days) they worked with the local office to troubleshoot and even got techs out here for FIVE CONSECUTIVE DAYS until we finally got my problem solved. They dealt with the beaurocracy in the local office for me. They were kind and reassuring. They did what troubleshooting they themselves could do on their end. They truly became my heroes. I'm happy to say that my problems have been resolved, and I even got a month's credit on my bill for the aggravation - without even asking!

If these guys had not been on Twitter, and if they weren't working so hard to help their customers, my experiences would have been the same as they always were. But, THEY HUNG IN THERE WITH ME UNTIL I GOT MY PROBLEM SOLVED!! I was ready to fire Comcast, get FIOS and scream holler and bash them at every turn, but they turned me into a fan! I even just upgraded my service with them and signed a contract for Business Class.

Making Whiners Sing Your Praises

I've also really been impressed with the guys who chime in on the comments in my blog posts. My tool posts have been some of my favorite to do, and I love doing the research and playing with the tools. It always warms my heart when people from those companies post tidbits in my comments or thank me for trying them out. That's really cool! A few (@dimdim) have even followed me on Twitter after such posts!

I think companies who ignore mediums like Twitter et al are really missing out on a valuable tool that enables them to turn mass amounts of people into loyal customers. Guy Kawasaki wrote an excellent post this week on How to Use Twitter as a Twool . His advice totally echoes what I've been saying here. Twitter itself is such a big pool of people who are generally a bit more vocal than many other customers. What a great opportunity to reach others. The companies I've mentioned above have used Twitter to turn me into an Evangelist for their services and products. That is a HUGE gain for business. No brand tee-shirts, mugs, stickers or other swag can compete with pure enthusiastic evangelism from customers! And well I'm just so doggone thrilled with them. They truly are my heroes.

Please give some love to YOUR heroes in the comments below.