Three Ways Twitter Can Work for Your Business

(Or ... How to Take Out Curly Bill)

By Heather Shoemaker (Twitter.com/heathersh)

Owner, Cheyenne Technology

I listened to Juliette Rule address the Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce on social media a few weeks ago. Rule, Community Development and PR Manager for the Sierra Trading Post, has grown the company’s Facebook fans to well over 60,000. Their Facebook shop has double the conversion rate of their regular online store. You can’t argue with that kind of social media success and she had the chamber members’ rapt attention. Near the end, a guy in the audience asked how he might leverage Twitter to do the same thing. Rule said she hasn’t had great success marketing on Twitter but asked if anyone else wanted to comment. 

Here’s what I would have said were I less timid. While Facebook kicks butt for social media marketing, Twitter offers a different but unarguably large potential audience. Businesses should keep both of these tools in their social media arsenal and use each for what it does best. Wyatt Earp, hero of the Wild West, is known for “buffaloing” outlaws with a .44 caliber revolver as he patrolled Tombstone, AZ. He also used it during the gunfight behind the OK Corral. But when it came time for Earp to take down Curly Bill Brocius, he came off his horse shooting a 10-gauge, double-barreled coach gun. And when is Twitter your 10-gauge?  When you need to:

• Grow your local business contacts

• Perform market research

• Generate leads

1. Local Networking

The best thing I ever did on Twitter was to seek out local tweeps. Only a few weeks ago I was introducing myself to a woman at a business meeting when she stopped me and said “Oh, I know you from Twitter.” She turned out to be a valuable contact, and meeting her in person made interacting on Twitter more fun. On another occasion I was looking for a contractor to help out with some website development. A friend mentioned a possible candidate and ... already knew him from Twitter.

Maybe this just proves that Cheyenne is small. But even if you’re in a large city, Twitter makes it easy to find nearby people who share your interests. While tools like LinkedIn are also handy for networking, LinkedIn imposes restrictions on who you can and can’t contact. I tried to get ahold of Rule on LinkedIn before her presentation, but LinkedIn wouldn’t let me send a message because I hadn’t worked with her before. On Twitter, I caught up with her within a few hours by simply tweeting @jkrule (more on this in #3). 

Here’s how to find local people on Twitter. Navigate to Twitter’s advanced twitter search page, which allows you to search for tweets in a certain area (based upon the location users provide in their profile). In this example, I’ll search for anyone who has tweeted about snow within 25 miles of Cheyenne. Once you get used to the syntax, you can skip the advanced search page and just enter the below sequence into the search field atop any Twitter page:

snow near:"Cheyenne, WY" within:25mi 

Substitute the terms: snow, Cheyenne, WY and 25 for whatever suits your purposes.  

As I click through the search results, I add local tweeters to a Twitter list I named Wyo. Original, I know. Some days, all I pay attention to is that list.

2. Access to Market Data

Most of us have heard stories about people who have gotten fired from work or have lost an insurance policy after updating their Facebook status with some incriminating tidbit. As a result, many users have upped their Facebook privacy settings to keep those photos from that bachelorette party in Cancun off of WikiLeaks. On Twitter, most of us operate with the understanding that tweets are public. The exception to that rule is people who mark their tweets as private, but these users aren’t the norm. (IMO - making your tweets private defeats the purpose of tweeting.) Whatever you or anyone else tweets within a reasonable time frame can be searched, examined, aggregated, and otherwise analyzed. For market research, this data constitutes a gold mine. 

You can use the search tools we discussed in the previous section to see what people are saying about ...

• Your product or services

• Your market vertical

• Your competition

• The @rihanna, @britneyspears remix ...

3. Lead Generation

Twitter requires a thicker skin than other social networking tools because while you can follow almost anyone, not everyone you follow will follow you back. Follow-back percentages I’ve seen range from 20% to 60%. Duncan Watts, a former Columbia sociologist who now works at Yahoo! Research, goes as far as to say that Twitter is not a social network owed to this low reciprocity. However you can get anyone (follower or not) to see your tweet by mentioning them. If, for example, you wanted to get my attention, all you need to do is include @heathersh in your tweet. Even if I don’t follow you, that tweet will pop up in my mentions feed.

Why is this important? It means you have the opportunity to reach out to anyone in Twitter. If you abuse that privilege you will be quickly blocked or put in Twitter Jail (more than 100 tweets per day). However if you use this feature with discretion, you’ll have the opportunity to reach out to people who express interest in exactly what you’re offering. 

I’ll use my company, Cheyenne Technology, as an example. In addition to social media integrations and consulting, we provide website and mobile app development. I keep a column in TweetDeck of posts by anyone looking for iPhone app development and I see dozens of them every day. I’ve reached out and have received positive leads; I’m supposed to be writing a quote for one right now.

Now, Back to Facebook

I don’t intend for this blog entry to provide an exhaustive list on how to use Twitter for business. These are just three areas where I have personally found success. Don’t forget that the most gratifying way you can use Twitter is just for fun. Finally, I have a favor to ask. Please like Cheyenne Technology on Facebook. I’ve been so focused on Twitter lately that I’ve failed to promote my Facebook fan page....and that’s about as smart as lugging around a 10-gauge in hopes of clubbing an outlaw.