This is a great illustration of why brands need to have process and presence in the Twittersphere: Bank of America (what not to do) and Wachovia (getting there!).

B of A is definitely not winning any awards these days in the minds of customers- a quick analysis of the Twitstream in the last few hours is running about

50:1 negative (excluded any posts focusing on capitalization or stock price)- and the common threads are clear: long lines, poor service, broken phone system, untrained reps, misallocated charges. I have posted a few here- they don’t represent the best or the worst- just a sampling of tweets from the last few hours. But that’s not my point- my point is- Where are they in the dialogue?? Where’s @bankofamerica on this?

By contrast, look at the way Wachovia is engaging. The Tweeter ends up looking like a flamer, and the company like an intentional, well meaning organization- who cares enough to engage in the conversation.

Maybe the companies that are not yet monitoring and responding to their brand mentions don’t get it yet.

This negative post is not one guy and his 20 followers- it goes out to anybody wondering “what does the Twittersphere think of this brand?”- and is using search terms, mining tools or buzz tools to find the answer to that question.

The amplification of a bad user experience is much greater than expected- as adoption grows (5M new users last month), getting your process for managing Twitter, and the other social networks, is no longer a nice to have.