How Twitter can make you a better Product Person.
Believe it or not, this edition of Dataday actually has 2 meanings in one, which I think are both important in understanding the future of customer interactions and feedback. Twitter is a platform of almost 200 Million total users, with a lot of people that are looking for anything from technology to just being a general consumer keeping track of their favorite products + people.
Unlike platforms like Facebook and Instagram, Twitter is a really easy way to leave feedback or interact with a brand through words, and not necessarily just through photos or through direct messaging. In some regards, it’s closer to LinkedIn, but even with LinkedIn, the main feed isn’t always even the focus. With Twitter, it’s all about feeds and making a statement on a your feed that feeds into the public.
So why is this important to someone in Product (Manager, Owner, Designer, Strategist)?
The Future of Customer Feedback
A key use of Twitter for Product Builders + Product Leaders is the idea of having a channel for users to ask questions and in some ways, give an indication of how easy it might be for them to give feedback.
For example, I’ve had products before where people have explicitly asked on Twitter: “Where can I leave feedback about the experience I had with a feature in your product”. An active Twitter account that responds to questions like this is, first, a great strategy for building ambassadorship and superfans, but also, under the surface, a way for Product leaders to understand the user flow + journey and where to improve it.
To see a brand that’s doing it right, let’s take a look at Copy.ai and their team.
Already off the bat, one can see the level of impact they’re having:
This is a product that already is good at promoting its user testimonials through Twitter, and makes sure to build incentives to interact with them by being responsive and sharing what their users are saying.
If end-users are reporting a harder time finding a way to upgrade or to add items to their plan with your product, and are asking on Twitter, this could be an indication that it’s too difficult to find on your website or in-app for your product.
This also gives the opportunity for someone like a product leader to reach out directly to the user to not only solve their issue but also build rapport that could lead to a call to learn more about reactions to features, or maybe a call to better understand what is missing from the product. Surveys can be effective, but not everyone will keep an eye out on those, so building other ways to communicate with a customer and build that relationship and collect feedback can be of great value to get them more comfortable with your product’s ecosystem.
For a Product Leader, it’s not just being aware, it’s having that understanding of the way a product feels to a user, and especially to product designers + product managers, being able to see what’s strong in a medium other than surveys.
The Future of Market Research + Competitive Research
Outside of understanding how users are interacting with your product, it’s also key to have a pulse on the market, industry, and vertical that you are in as a Product leader. Twitter is a cheat code being able to kickstart some of these efforts.
If you’re looking at the right places, in the right communities, and following the right influencers in your market/space, you can find out a lot about what users are enjoying and even see real-time interactions with products that might be competitors or near-competition with certain features in your product’s space.
By being able to track these interactions, there can be a good idea of what kind of features are missing from competing products and where there might be gaps in what users want from some of their utilities (what are users asking for on Twitter? What are they comfortable with requesting in public?).
Outside of just seeing what’s going in your vertical in technology, it should also be noted that Twitter can be a place to discover amazing threads, tweets, and just general sharing of resources from Product leaders around the globe, working in different companies, at different capacities, with varied backgrounds.
Being able to have a solid pulse on what’s going in SaaS might be good for your B2B product, but also having a good understanding of what Product Managers are using to succeed and any other tips you can get can be just as helpful.
In conclusion, Twitter is a valuable resource that I really do suggest looking into if you’re someone trying to level up as a Product Leader/Product Person, and also can be a place to understand your own market, understand certain competing platforms and their features, and also a way to generally understand how to better utilize data + feedback as a product leader.
A quick follow-up, if you’re enjoying this content, make sure to give me a follow on Twitter at @nikvimal. I tweet about Product, Leadership, Startups, and more, but with a similar angle of new-age strategy as I do here with Dataday!