By: Peg McDermott. With more than 500 million active users, Twitter is one of the best places to turn as you attempt to generate leads for your business.
Not everybody can be considered a prospect, however, there are potential buyers in every industry. Your goal is simple: find these people and connect with them in a way that will improve your chance of forming a relationship.
Below are five tips for using Twitter to generate leads:
1. Find prospects. Who are you following? Who is following you? Should any of these people be considered prospects?
The best prospects are those who are already following you, however, you don’t want to stop there. Follow your competitors, taking a closer look at who they are interacting with. This will give you a better idea of the types of prospects that are out there.
2. Identify buying signals. These can include but are not limited to: a person who is dissatisfied with a competitor’s product or service, questions about your company (or another one in the industry), and search terms such as “can anybody recommend” and “advice on.”
3. Conversation is key. It is one thing to pinpoint potential leads, but another thing entirely to open up a conversation that could lead to a sale down the road. Fortunately, Twitter makes it simple to strike up a conversation with a prospect.
Tip: build a relationship before connecting in an attempt to make a sale. You can do this by following the person, retweeting their tweets, and providing advice.
4. Build your list of followers. Simply put, the more followers you have the more people who will see your tweets. This goes a long way in increasing your chance of interacting with others. By providing targeted tweets and engaging in conversation with others, your follower list will organically grow.
5. Be patient. When you get started with Twitter you will have zero followers. As frustrating as it may be, things will begin to pickup sooner rather than later. It may take several months before you generate your first lead, but it is well worth the wait.
Now do you have a better idea of how you can use Twitter to generate leads? If nothing else, take the time to use this social media service on a daily basis. Even though you may make some mistakes along the way, it is better than sitting back and missing out on the action altogether.
