In response to declining footfall and sales BestBuy have adopted a interesting Twitter strategy to take their in-store expertise online. Quoted In a recent Bloomberg article, BestBuy CMO Brian Judge said,
“The old paradigm is you open your doors and hope someone comes in. In the new world, you can go out and find people that are talking about technology and what they’re interested in buying, and be generous with your knowledge”
The BestBuy answer to this problem is Twelpforce. So far 500 in store employees have signed up to participate in a scheme that asks employees to scan twitter for potential customers seeking information about technology products in their downtime.
Its clear that this is a learning process for BestBuy, If you have a look at John Bernier’s twitter feed (the BB Marketing Manager behind Twelpforce) you start to get an understanding as to just how seriously they are taking this project.
To my mind they have a clear challenge and that is making sure that Twelpforce remains a service to help consumers solve their problems and not simply a channel to promote their best offers. It is really encouraging though to see traditional retailers using social media platforms as tools to promote their existing strengths. I can’t imagine it will be long before we see similar ideas on this side of the pond.