This BusinessWeek article, How Companies Use Twitter to Bolster Their Brands, made me think. At first, I didn't get much further than the subtitle:

The “creepy trend” part is slightly confusing. What’s so creepy about attentive customer service? Monitoring Twitter feeds that mention your brand is one thing, and a no-brainer at that. Like any social network, online or offline, this is an environment in which brands are expected to be sociable. Tweeting back to the offended party might be a more appropriate response than no response at all.

Sure, the potential is there for brand voices to come off as creepy, awkward or forced when venturing into emerging social situations such as Twitter feeds – but brand voices face the same challenge in every medium. The anxiety expressed by the BusinessWeek article reflects the hesitation many marketers have for social networks like Twitter.

There are good reasons for that hesitation. Twitter is new, and therefore a little scary for some. Like blogs and other social networks, it demands dedicated resources. Twitter is unreliable, now notorious for repeated outages and network down time. Twitter is instantly public – whatever you do is out there for everyone to see, right away. Sounds intimidating.

There are good reasons to be brave, too, because it’s pretty cool when it works well. GM used Twitter in an attempt to help a ready-to-buy customer at a Saturn dealership who couldn’t find a salesman. Jet Blue uses Twitter to monitor customers in need of information on flight delays or cancellations. Brands like Dell, Comcast, and Whole Foods recognize the Twitter user as an “influencer” of a target audience, and pay attention accordingly. The potential for evolving customer service is huge. The immediacy can work to a brand's advantage, enabling real-time responses that reach a consumer wherever he or she may be. This is a new means for brands to prove their usefulness to consumers, but it's probably not for everyone.

Still, what’s so creepy about it? The article points out that “not all Tweeters want Corporate America following their Tweets” -- yet they continue to post Tweets for everyone to read! That’s a conflicting message, but it’s also a defense mechanism. These influencers are still getting used to the personal transparency that, in many ways, resembles the same transparency consumers want from their favorite brands. Transparency can be a scary thing, because there's no hiding once you have it. Right now, these conflicting messages keep corporations guessing about how best to socialize their brands.

Personally, I’m fascinated that people who willingly and publicly broadcast their lives, 140 characters at a time, are so surprised to learn that the likes of Jet Blue or Zappos are reading Twitter feeds. Because, really, which is creepier: microblogging your every move for the entire world to read, or responding to a single post that implicates your brand or business by name?