Friday 29 May 2009

Twittertastic

How we use twitter in 140 words or less
To be honest I am mostly to blame for our online content and I started the discussion about being able to show a more personal side after discovering Twitter

Finding Twitter
We'd found it via BT Tradespace. Now the Tradespace site is great, though it could be awesome if it was just a little more robust. Whilst on there we started to engage with some other businesses and immediately saw the benefits with lots of on line advice including Twitter.
Having set up our Twitter account we (I) quickly found myself wasting hours on it and not really getting anywhere. Just as I thought we'd abandon it we found Nikki Pilkington and her tweetmentor course. Frankly we've
not looked back.

What we Tweet
It's a mixture of industry news, plugs for our products and services coupled with simple social interaction with our followers and followees. I tend to programme business tweets using tweet later. This allows us to see what impact posting at different times has. It also ensures that there is business content and not just me getting involved with friendly banter. I do worry about coming across to "spammy". The mixture of "live" and "programmed" tweets can mean at times we are making a lot of posts but so far no negative feedback.

For business and pleasure but always social
I've made lots of friends and contacts on line, people I enjoy speaking with, learnt lots from and LOL all the time with. Whilst my wife has been in and out of hospital the messages of support have been generous, charming and totally unexpected and all within the confines of 140 characters. You can't ask for much more can you?

Thursday 28 May 2009

Why does CarCare Direct need a blog?

In the beginning
We launched CarCare Direct in 2008. Three of us, with a combined motor trade experience of over 65 years, decided that our breadth of experience in Retail, Fleet and Finance could be put to good use, helping save small businesses and the private motorist especially, money on their motoring bills. Our mantra was : saving money, spreading the cost, removing the hassle and remembering the environment. Every time we do anything we look to meet these criteria.

Making it more personal
We love the CarCare Direct website and our ever growing range of products but we wanted a way to engage on a more personal level. A tool where we could share our knowledge and opinions without worrying if they reflected badly on our company. A way of sharing some of the detail without overloading the site. We started to use Twitter, but sometimes 140 characters just isn't enough.
So here we are, looking forward to letting you know more about us, sharing our thoughts, gossip and detail. If you want to know anything specifically get in touch and we'll see what we can do to help.