Does Your Company Suck? Find Out On Twitter

This works best if you’re fairly well-established.

1. Go to Twitter search.
2. Enter your company name, followed by the word ‘sucks’

(If you don’t get any results, use different words and phrases. Or maybe your business needs to be trying harder?)

Here, for example, is Comcast.

This also works with individuals. Obviously, the more unique your name is, the more genuine the results are likely to be.

You can, of course, put a positive spin on this – maybe Comcast rules – or search for any keyword, opinion or emotion you like. It just takes a little creativity. But the value is absolutely tremendous.

Maybe you could permanently run a search for your brand and a given keyword (sucks, hate, rubbish, complaint, or even an emoticon) and directly address any issues your customers are having? Twitter excels at brand and consumer management, and the first-line, first-response support possibilities are enormous.

(Tip: if your brand has more than one word, contain it within “quotation marks” and use Boolean operators to get a purer search. For example, here’s Best Buy. You can do even more with Twitter’s advanced search options, which likely will make a better starting point for novices.)

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