With more than 175 million users, few can argue that Twitter isn’t a valuable resource for tracking everything from consumer sentiment to the latest business trends. Despite high traffic on this content-rich site, it is often underutilized by sales and business development professionals. With more users becoming active each day, Twitter can serve as a treasure trove of information.
Business development and sales executives can use Twitter to learn more about prospects, keep track of client activity and research industry trends. Twitter can also be used to engage with prospects and customers, though we’ll focus on the listening aspect of Twitter for this session of “Stalking with Style.” Here are a few practical tips to move that cold lead to a warm one.
1. Listen to the conversation.
As every good “stalker” knows, you have to listen to know what is going on. Start by visiting http://search.twitter.com/ to research and track what your competitors, customers and prospects are saying.
Search industry keywords to find out what is being said about your industry. In the example below, I searched for “Content Management Systems.” At first glance you notice there are a lot of people talking about content management systems. Despite the volume, you may find some items that might interest you. Below you see a person discussing CMS systems.
To learn more about that person and understand why he is discussing CMS systems, click on his profile.
Here we find that Rick is an ASP.Net developer, a part time student and a drum aficionado. Whether you’re looking to start a conversation with Rick, or looking at a prospect’s profile, you now have additional background that can help inform a conversation. Although I don’t know much about drums, I could ask Rick which drummer he likes most or if he has ever seen “Spinal Tap.” This is an emotional level of conversation that would never have been achieved if you didn’t use Twitter.
If Rick is a good prospect or possibly a good person to recruit, I can learn more about him by doing one of two things; click on the profile link or read his tweets. Let’s explore these two further.
2. Click on the Profile URL
Clicking a profile URL can reveal pages of information about a person, or it can reveal nothing. If a profile is set up properly, it will either go to the person’s LinkedIn profile, a blog or a Tumbler account. Here you can find out about the person’s interests, where he or she works and whether or not more exploration is warranted.
3. Read Tweets
If the person uses a location-based service, you can learn where they have been or what they have been doing. This can help you understand whether your prospect or client has “checked in” at a competitor’s location, what time they show up in the office or if they are at a vacation spot, which saves you from sending an email that will return an out-of-office message. The person could also be participating in a conference that you are attending.
4. Follow Followers
Last, but not least, review the list of people that follow your prospect, as well as the list of people that your prospect follows. In those groups, there may be colleagues, industry contacts or pundits worth noting. As the number of people you follow, and inherently that follow you, increases, there is more of an opportunity to take the next step: to engage in dialogue. Look at tweets to find interesting conversations and follow topics that your contacts are interested in. If a question is posed to the Twitter community by one of your targets, jump into the dialogue. And don’t forget to re-tweet interesting posts; this will definitely get their attention.
I hope this posts helps gives you some ideas on how to “Stalk with Style” on Twitter. If you missed my previous post on LinkedIn, you can find it here: LinkedIn Stalking with Style.
