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Use Twitter to Win Customers & Spy on Your Competition!

I posted this tip on the JLC forum and then sent it out to my weekly tips newsletter readers on Saturday, but I thought it made sense to do a general posting for all of you since the material might really help some of you get started with social media. So, here goes!

This Week’s Marketing Tip: Use Twitter to win customers and spy on your competition in less than 5 minutes a day!

This tip on Twitter was a post I did on JLC Forums last week to prove a point, that there is a value to Twitter. If you can put this tip into practice I promise you at least one new client or customer a month. To some of you, that is thousands and thousands of dollars in new revenue a year, so pay attention!

Twitter has a place in the contractor’s marketing arsenal, If for nothing else than to listen. Listen to your friends, listen to your clients or customers, and listen to what is going on around you. And you don’t have to sit there and watch the Twitter stream while drooling and losing consciousness, there is a smarter way.
SO this week’s tip is going to be how to use Twitter to keep track of leads, conversations, competition and opportunities.

Ready?

Here is a step by step way for you to spend just 5 minutes a night tracking what is going on in your marketplace every day.

What you will need:

1. A twitter account
2. An RSS reader such as Google Reader or the one in Microsoft Outlook
3. A list of your primary jobs; Greg does decks, so let’s use decks.
4. A list of all the areas you work in. Counties, cities, towns and areas.
5. A list of zip codes you work in
6. Your top 5 competitors

The process:

1. Sign in to Twitter (log in under the old version, it is easier to do what I am going to tell you)

2. In the sidebar, search for all of your primary job types and areas, counties, cities, towns or areas. Let’s use Bergen decks, Bergen deck builders, north jersey deck companies, etc.

3. For each search, hit the little magnifying glass. Even if your results show zero, I want you to scroll down to the bottom of the sidebar where it says “RSS for this search query”.

4. Click that – The RSS reader of your choice should open and you now have a little bird out there listening all day, every day for the time when someone mentions that search string we entered.

5. You can get even more granular results if you put brackets around your search such as “Bergen decks”, which will only look for search strings with that exact phrase.

6. Spend 1 hour doing this for everything that relates to you, your company, your competition, your market, your product, your service your whatever you want.

7. Make sure you click the “RSS for this search query” for each, and you will now begin to start getting messages in your RSS feed for you to take 5 minutes a day to review.

8. The ones that really make sense for you to jump into the fray and comment or offer an opinion or suggestion is how you build brand equity and clients online.

9. Now just check your RSS reader every night to see if there is anything worth your time and there you have it, an easy-peasy way for you to get started in social media marketing!

Have a question?

Have a sales or marketing question you need answered? Let me know and I will do my best to answer it on my next podcast episode. You can Email me, use the call in line at 267-482-0205 to record your question to be played on the next podcast, or just leave it in the comments below. -Darren

Photo Credit: Respres

14 responses to “Use Twitter to Win Customers & Spy on Your Competition!”

  1. Shawn Warren Avatar
    Shawn Warren

    Interesting article. To be quite honest a few years ago I had wondered what all the fuss over twitter was. I did get an account and the first 6 months I was pretty avid on it even though I was a learning in progress.
    I had came to the conclusion that it wasn’t for me save to generate some traffic to my website. I wondered what good was it for people from across the pond or country to be directed toward my site when I was more concerned about Local people. I guess I still don’t fully understand how to use this.
    I don’t see how one can spend so much time on it either especially when One person is the sole operator and techno geek.

    This post, I can see some value that doesn’t take a whole lot of time. However, In my area at least, I’m not coming up with much in the way of search. Either nada or something that really doesn’t pertain. Again, perhaps I am doing this wrong as well.

    1. Darren Avatar
      Darren

      Hey Shawn,

      If for nothing else, you can keep a pulse on your overall market and your competition!

      Thanks again for stopping by again Shawn! How’s business?

      1. Shawn Warren Avatar
        Shawn Warren

        “pulse on your overall market and your competition” Exactly! Or generate leads for myself. I have yet to find some local competition using twitter as of late. I know they were there a couple years ago. Perhaps they thought like me uh 😛

        Business is sporadic. Illinois raising the personal & corporate income taxes as much as they did will probably dampen the market. I’m optimistic though. Lot of changes going on, some scary and yet some exciting.

        Thanks for asking Daren

      2. Shawn Warren Avatar
        Shawn Warren

        “pulse on your overall market and your competition” Exactly! Or generate leads for myself. I have yet to find some local competition using twitter as of late. I know they were there a couple years ago. Perhaps they thought like me uh 😛

        Business is sporadic. Illinois raising the personal & corporate income taxes as much as they did will probably dampen the market. I’m optimistic though. Lot of changes going on, some scary and yet some exciting.

        Thanks for asking Darren

        1. Darren Avatar
          Darren

          No problem Shawn!

  2. Chris Spoerl Avatar
    Chris Spoerl

    I finally caught the Twitter bug, and let’s say I find it more interesting than Facebook.
    I view Twitter as interactive news feed, which allows users to engage.

    My mail goal is to be social, and develop relationships.

    Good post Darren.

    1. Shawn Warren Avatar
      Shawn Warren

      Interesting way to put it Chris ‘interactive news feed’ Maybe I’ll fire up tweet deck on my virtual machine and put a little time in on it. Twitter has always perplexed me for my kind of work.

      Question, did you mean ‘mail goal’? or main goal? Too bad we can’t edit these :p

      Sorry about the double post Darren. I noticed I spelled your name wrong in the first one. My bad.

      1. Darren Avatar
        Darren

        No worries Shawn! Thanks for commenting!

  3. Scott Avery Avatar
    Scott Avery

    Getting contractors to use Twitter might be difficult because they view it as something you have to monitor. The easier approach that I use is to set up a Google alert for the name of my competition so that when they actually do something I can tell. I guess you could argue that when people are tweeting about contractors you would catch that and Google likely wouldn’t.

    1. Darren Avatar
      Darren

      Hey Scott,

      Thanks for stopping by. You can absolutely do it with Alerts, only problem is you lose the interactive part, which is the point to the social aspect. Unless of course you just want to keep tabs on things.

  4. Discount Contractors Houston Avatar
    Discount Contractors Houston

    Hi Darren. We’re just getting into Twitter (http://twitter.com/HoustonRemodelr), but I have to admit I’m skeptical of the value it can provide to my business. A search of ‘remodeling’ confined to my city only shows businesses pushing their message. And when you consider why people use twitter, it doesn’t really make sense for them to follow contractors or care about what we have to say unless they’re in the industry. I’d guess it’d be especially helpful in a niche that people talk about a lot. For example, I’m sure one can find lots of tweets about people talking about buying a car, car problems, hating their car etc. What a great opportunity for a dealership to connect with those people and try to generate some leads! General contractor services are a bit of a different beast, but overall we’re committed to working on having a presence, listening to what the market is saying, and sharing good content.

    1. Darren Avatar
      Darren

      The ROI is that you will be in business in 5 years. Here is what I mean. Today you live off of testimonials and reviews. Five years from now your social presence is going to be what you trade on. Not your good work. Your good work will be the RESULT of keeping up a presence online. What people say about you (on FB and Twitter) matter much more than what you say. And finally, the shear number of followers and likes you have will be a confidence factor not unlike the number of testimonials you have now. You are not going to lose building a social presence now for the long term, the company that doesn’t and waits the 4 1/2 years will. Reason, when all of the contractors I know realized they needed websites, bam…they all got sites. That’s easy. Now they appear the same as their competition. Problem with social is, you can’t instantly manufacture 2000 followers or 500 likes. That takes time and effort and one-on-one marketing.

  5. Discount Contractors Houston Avatar
    Discount Contractors Houston

    That makes a lot of sense. We take a lot of pride in our references and testimonials. We’ll definitely start tweeting snippets from some of the latter out. I also see the social proof benefit of having followers and likes if someone is researching whether or not to do business with us as its a brand footprint. Unfortunately, there are plenty of con artist contractors out there. I just came across this today: http://www.reddit.com/r/SocialEngineering/comments/16bvox/looking_for_help_fighting_back_against_a_con/. Obviously a crook isn’t going to have a Twitter account of Facebook page. We’re in it for the long haul. Thanks for the perspective!

    1. Darren Avatar
      Darren

      Keep thinking a few steps ahead, you will kill it I’m sure! Good luck, stop by often and thanks for commenting!