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
