Twitter is great if you have a question, complaint, or passing comment that the company can address quickly (for example, asking Gogo Inflight Internet () for a free flight code, as I once did). But if you have a customer support issue that will necessitate some talking through, you're probably better off picking up the phone.

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So you're ready to take Twitter by storm and start broadcasting your company queries and critiques over the microblogging platform. But what if you're just getting started? You have no followers, you've never typed a tweet in your life, and you're not a "big deal" on social networks. Will companies even listen to what you have to say?

We analyzed customer service-related Tweets from the Twitter accounts of ten large companies--AT&T (), Best Buy (), Comcast (), Dell (), Groupon (), RIM BlackBerry (), Sony (), Verizon Wireless (), Xbox Support (), and Zappos ()--to determine whether they paid attention to users' follower counts. In our study, we found that companies answered Tweets from customers with anywhere from 0 to 100,000 followers.