Update Feb 12th, ‘09: Daily Anchor Editors Andrew Lennon and Ella Keeven met with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey yesterday and had a really great talk… post is here
Inspired yet again by a past Daily Anchor post, I went out on a limb (so to speak) and registered for an account with Twitter.
I was skeptical at first, but in just a few days of persistent use, have discovered tangible value – including landing a meeting with a key decision-maker who I would never have reached otherwise.
After creating my account, I started prowling for people I knew, or companies I’ve worked with, to start following. This produced pretty low numbers and no real useful results or followers, so I took a different tack. I discovered www.search.twitter.com.
This vantage point provides a true bird’s eye view to the users and information with relevance to me. By entering a search term like “Applicant Tracking System” I am provided every tweet in history, in chronological order, containing that term. As a marketer for an ATS provider, finding someone tweeting about this type of software is like gold- especially when I entered names of our competitors, and my own company name as a search term. Now I was getting real time user feedback on ourselves as well as our competitors, as well as general user comments in my target market. However, sitting at a search engine all day hitting refresh is not my idea of a productive day.
I noticed a link for an RSS Feed for this query, so I hopped over to my Google Reader and copied the URL for one of my searches into the Add Subscription bar. The feed was picked up, and now every result was being consistently refreshed and organized into digestible Google Reader feeds. I repeated the process for each of my searches, including partner companies, industry buzzwords, competitors, and strategic clients. Now I can quickly browse these results every day in 5-10 minutes.
My meeting with a decision-maker resulted from reading a tweet about her disappointment with one ATS vendor, but favor for another during her search for a system. I posted a quick “@” reply mentioning my company’s unique value proposition. After she replied with a “Thank you” but was not yet “following” me (I could have sent a direct message if we were followers of each other) I searched for her on LinkedIn and added her to my network. When she accepted, she also sent me a lengthy message through that channel detailing her stage in vendor selection, and her available times for a meeting.
The fact is, locating the prospect through this unique channel, making the most of 140 characters (serious elevator pitch refinement!) and timely communication has generated an opportunity for the company at no more cost other than a few minutes of my time. If this is a repeatable process, there is tremendous value here from the perspective of proactive marketers or account executives who can take initiative on the lead generation front.
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Photo credit: kwerfeldein
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Mike,
I love your articles.
-Luke