LocalBunny Helps Businesses Manage Twitter Relations with Customers

Fact: Twitter has turned into a great marketing tool for businesses savvy enough to leverage it properly. (This despite Dave's shortsighted claims to the contrary.)

Of course, there's a Catch-22: The more followers a business attracts, the harder it becomes to manage responses to customers' tweets. And unanswered tweets are like unanswered e-mails: They irritate customers.

Enter LocalBunny, a new service that provides an automated Twitter-response system. Here's how it works:

After creating a LocalBunny account, you enter information about your business (name, address, etc.), various keyboards, and your desired responses.

From there, whenever a customer tweets one of the keywords, LocalBunny tweets back a response. It's entirely automated, and the service runs around the clock.

Alas, according to TechCrunch's overview of LocalBunny, there are some issues with the service. For starters, there's no easy way (yet) for customers to discover a business's available keyboards.

What's more, LocalBunny seems pricey: the $99/month Classic plan supports just one Twitter account and offers 25 responses. The Deluxe plan allows multiple accounts and unlimited responses -- but you have to call for pricing. Gulp.

Even so, this could be a solid solution for a business that's enjoying Twitter-marketing success and wants to keep the ball rolling.

Want to do even more with Twitter? Check out recent posts like Manage Your Twitter Account in Outlook, Learn Twitter-Speak, Find a Job Fast at TweetMyJobs, and A Businessperson's Guide to Using Twitter.