MARKETINGPROFS — In a minor stroke of genius, Best Buy created @Twelpforce, a Twitter-based means to pose tech questions and get answers in real time. Today, Twelpforce is more than 28,000 followers strong. Reviews are so positive, and its execution so impressive, that the agency responsible (Crispin Porter + Bogusky) received the Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes Lions this year. Twelpforce's day-to-day operations demonstrate the know-how of Best Buy employees, and their customer-service expertise, right before tweeters' eyes! Here's how Twelpforce gets it right:...

MARKETINGPROFS — Though many companies are now using social media to acquire new customers and increase brand awareness, few are using social media channels for customer-service objectives, according to a survey from Alterian. Among surveyed top-brand senior-level marketing executives, 30.1% cite customer acquisition as their most important objective for social media and 26.5% cite driving brand awareness. Just 1.2% cite customer service:...

MYCUSTOMER.COM — While three out of 10 large brands are employing social media in a bid to acquire new customers, less than 1% consider the channel key to achieving customer service goals. According to a survey among 400 senior marketing executives at major brands by marketing software provider Alterian, a further 26% said that a key objective of engaging with social media was to drive brand awareness, while 24% saw it as an important means of retaining customers...

SOCIAL MEDIA EXPLORER — There’s lots of buzz around "social CRM" software, strategies and programs these days. It’s getting the kind of play "social business" did about this time last year when the analysts at Forrester jumped ship for Altimeter and Diachis. They had to invent new phrases to sell their services to the C-Suite. If you don’t have an innovative-sounding name for what you do, then I guess you don’t attract as much attention. Social CRM is being hocked by monitoring services, market research firms, traditional sales software and -- if you can believe it -- Twitter applications. Brand managers, marketing managers and agencies everywhere are anxious to get them some of that social CRM, by golly. Sadly, most of them don’t even know what CRM stands for. Before you go and plop down money for software that does nothing if you don’t understand the purpose for it, let’s look at what social CRM really is...

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK — Mike Brice skipped the queue at the Delta Air Lines Inc. ticket counter and dashed off a post on Twitter Inc. when he missed his Atlanta connection en route home to Utah from South Carolina. Within minutes, the 40-year-old communications consultant had been rebooked for the following morning by an agent on the Delta team that uses Twitter to remedy passengers' real-time complaints -- changing flights, finding lost luggage, or sharing details on weather delays. Bucking the typical corporate practice of monitoring Twitter just to listen to consumers, Delta sets itself apart by resolving gripes on the No. 3 social-networking site in the U.S., said Shel Holtz of consultant Holtz Communication & Technology in San Francisco...