How to find customers for your business with Twitter

“The biggest mistake marketers make with Twitter is not realizing its full potential as a way to bring in more revenue. Yes, Twitter is a place for engagement with followers; but it’s also a place to generate leads and drive new sales for your organization.” – Hubspot

A pain point for many small businesses is acquiring new customers. Here’s my guide on what has (and hasn’t) worked for me in the past. It’s pretty simple.

Don’t spam your offering and be genuine. We’re all humans remember.

It’s not all about you. Although the main aim of many companies active on social media is to convert and promote current offers, it shouldn’t be the only thing you’re talking about.

Here is an example of how not to tweet about your product or service:

Social media marketing is all about engagement and being authentic. This should always be kept at the forefront when posting tweets.

“I have seen so many businesses not grasping this key shift in marketing. It’s particularly blatant with businesses (often small businesses, or those new to Twitter) who actually use hashtags like #buythisproduct”

This is a terrible approach for a small business as the advantage of being small is the ability to do things that don’t scale. Small businesses are able to create genuine one-to-one connections with their customers in ways that can’t be replicated by bigger companies.

The same applies to social media

For instance, if you tweet “need web developer” on twitter you’ll get bombarded with automated messages from around the world in seconds. Try it… I dare you. Automated replying as a marketing technique is highly ineffective as it involves sending a generic message to everyone. Not smart.

The engagement rates will be terrible because no matter how good your copy is, people can sense a generic message from a mile away.

How you should do it

I personally use a tool called IceRocket (or Twazzup) to monitor twitter for specific phrases. I then sync my replies with the Buffer extension to ‘drip feed’ highly personal and thought out responses to potential customers. This converts way better!

It’s the effort that counts and people really appreciate it.

For example:

If you ran a student accommodation review website like say studentcrowd.com…

1. Search for relevant keywords about your interest area. In this case some relevant keywords would be: student houses, student accommodation, my accommodation

Pro Tip: Include typos of your keywords when searching.

2. Draft up a reply being sure to include the customer’s name to make it more personable. (Also include your name too for higher conversions). Locate a relevant tweet including your target keywords and draft up a reply.

3. Then hit the buffer button to schedule your tweet into your pre-defined posting slots and repeat with the process with a different customer.

I personally have 12 tweeting slots spaced at 1 hour intervals which allows for a maximum of 12 custom replies spaced out equally every day.

Although this may be more time consuming than blasting out a generic message it is definitely a better method.

Remember on social: No one likes to feel like they’re being sold to. Conversations = Conversions.