Getting Leads with Twitter

Coupling Twitter hashtag searches and 3^rd party software, you can get notifications whenever anyone on twitter writes a tweet containing a keyword you specify, which then gives you the opportunity to reach out to them and start a dialogue. For instance if you are in the travel industry, you can have it so when certain cities are tweeted about you can get notified, and you can then directly comment on that user’s tweet, providing useful information.

Using Advanced Search

Keywords

First you will need to decide what your keywords are (be it landscaping design, florist, auto repair). To determine this, ask yourself what customers would search on Google in order to find a company with your services/products, and secondly, what words would customers use to describe your products/services in their daily conversations.

Location

Once you have your keywords you then need to determine what your service areas are (cities). Ask yourself how far customers would travel to your place of business, and or how far you would travel to customer’s homes. Once you have this list you can then go into Twitter’s Advanced Search and search for each keyword, and then specify the geographic location you want searched.

It is strongly recommended that you include the geographic location in your search as the goal of this search is to find potential future customers, so it will do you no good to have customers who are so far that they cannot physically reach your place of business.

Contact

You should now have sizable search results with people talking about your industry in your geographic location. Now it is time for you to break the ice and reach out to them, and join in on their conversations. It is recommended that you take the position of the ‘helpful informer’, than the salesman initially, otherwise you will be ignored.

By reaching out to these people, and providing helpful/useful information to them in their discussions you will become an authority to them (or at least someone reliable), and they will convert to future customers if you keep this up. Just continue to answer their questions and be helpful, and never miss an opportunity to direct them to YOUR website for more information on the topic being discussed.