Business is not hip to Twitter
I have performed an experiment over the past weeks and months giving blatant opportunities to anyone hip enough to monitor the opportunities on twitter. Like we say in the fishing world, “I barely got a nibble”
Home Renovation
I am getting married in one month. May 16th to be exact, and I am in the process of doing some last minute renovations to my bath and kitchen. On twitter, for the last three to four weeks I have been putting out tweets referring to the wood work and the renovations I am doing in these spaces.
Tweet(s):
Now these were not the only two tweets about my home renovations. There were many, many more. Is this a missed opportunity? What would you do if you represented someone in the home renovations business? Think creatively, would you have responded to me in any way? Would you maybe send me a link to something relevant?
Marriage
As I said above I am getting married in one month. I have thrown out quite a few tweets during the process of our planning over the last year.
Tweets(s):
Again, I have referenced getting married quite a bit over the last year. Not a single person has sent me any kind of offering based on that information. Again, I ask “Missed opportunity?” I think it is. In fact this doesn’t have to be done in a spammy way, but just a message that says. “Hey Keith, I make handmade centerpieces, what date is your wedding” Just might be enough to catch my attention and turn my focus back to you.
Honeymoon
Tweet(s):
I’m not sure I could have been any more “Baiting” than that! As all of these things are very true, they were also an experiment to see if anyone would contact me. Now, to be fully disclosed, many of my friends offered really good suggestions. In fact I looked into anyone that offered a suggestion to see if they had any professional ties to their recommendations. They did not. Surprisingly, for an industry as large and as profitable as the travel and leisure industry you would have thought someone would have come in with a suggestion. Again I ask, “Missed Opportunity?”
Experts say, “Monitor the Conversations”
Twitter and social media are still in early days. Companies clearly are not hip to “Conversational Marketing” as Joe Jaffe likes to put it. Do you want companies contacting you in places where conversations are taking place? In my opinion, I think companies and individuals are one in the same. If you have content that may be of clear help to me or anyone else, offer it up. The way I see it, if you are monitoring social networks for this type of information and you don’t act on it, it’s a major fail.
All of this being said, the key word here is “Conversation”. maybe companies don’t think they can scale individual conversations. Maybe organizations are scared of this new conversational medium. Maybe companies think that there is no ROI in conversations, that their money is better spent pushing messages at you on billboards and Television spots.
Let me be clear here and say that I can’t stand being spammed. I am not asking to be spammed on every comment I make in the social media space. However, if you are a company monitoring and listening to this space, I think it’s time to start adding value back. If your a company that is ignoring social media all together, then I think it’s time you started planning your funeral. There is massive amount of data pouring into the public domain. Be smart, be creative, and start figuring out a way to “Join the Converation”
Keith Burtis is a social media and digital marketing professional. If you or your company are looking to REV THE ENGINE on your digital efforts contact Keith today! Specialties include: Blog design/Integration, Custom Facebook Pages, Social, Digital and Interactive Content strategies.
Comments
Robert Scoble said this very same thing when he was about to have Milan. He has now announced another baby, so we will see. I have had some companies approach me with some things. They are listening and trying to figure ways to respond. Keep up the shouting once in a while someone will hear!
Totally agree, Keith … although I also see an opposite future, where everyone is tracking every peripheral keyword and uses tools to automatically send you spam messages. (Just think of your email inbox minus a spam filter. I get well over 1,000 spam emails a day. Some seem to be pretty darn targeted too … one made it past my spam filters today with a subject of “Guinness GTD viagra”).
Through Elastic Lab I’ve setup a Twitter account called @ParallelParking where I try to help people who tweet about parallel parking troubles. I might answer a question or send a link to a relevant video, or just wish them luck. One person so far got a little weirded out, but overall people have been thankful for the information and very friendly. Before Twitter becomes a spam fest, there’s plenty of opportunity for legitimate companies to contribute positively to the conversation.
(P.S. You should go to Seattle for your honeymoon! Or California.)
Whilst I get your point and agree it is surprising that more companies don’t respond to buying signals, I might mention that several people have dropped me over the months when I have tried to give them helpful links and information about products I thought might solve their problems, although those products had nothing to do with me personally!
If it is difficult for an independent person to mention a brand name without being mistaken for a spammer, imagine how much harder it might be for an employee of the brand!
Having said that, I have also been thanked for similar information by others – of course I don’t know the ratio as I haven’t been doing it as an experiment or I would have kept statistics – maybe losing a few followers would be worth it if one were purely using Twitter for business purposes anyway!
I definitely think that brand monitoring will become a necessity over the next few months/years. Services like Backtype and Twitter are simply making it to easy to take advantage of the benefits offered by both services.
Everyone that you find through here is a targeted lead. You have to step in or get left behind by your competitors.
Very well written my friend.
In regards to your observations, my opinion is that the audience that would respond to the buying signals you have sent perhaps do not exist in large quantities within twitter. Or at least not within your sphere of influence on twitter.
Twitter seems to main comprise of Internet Marketers, Coders and some business oriented people. But you might be left wanting if you target specific industries like home renovation and wedding planning, especially seeing that they are both pretty low tech industries.
BTW congrats on both activities, I personally know how much work and how rewarding they can both be.
Rakesh, thanks for the comment. It triggered my brain when you said “Within your sphere of influence”. My question is this. How does someone become within your sphere of influence? That is the key here. By conversing (not pushing) you create “trusted source” feelings. You will be top of mind when someone does say “I need this or that”
Keith:
One of the beautiful things about twitter, like Rakesh says, is twitter allows you the “possibility” to increase your sphere of influence.
When someone adds you to their following list, you’re automatically brought into their sphere of influence.
However, you’ve got to take action and converse with them and hope they will respond so their followers can see them chatting with you.
Your conversation content determines how their followers perceive you to be a “real” person or someone “faking” your way into their social network.
Twitter’s social network can be touchy… because everyone uses twitter for different reasons.
I’ve had people unfollow me because I’ve posted personal comments… business comments… supporting comments… opinionated comments… etc.
I’ve also had people follow me because I’ve posted personal comments… business comments… supporting comments… opinionated comments… etc.
You’ve got to keep in mind that you’re not going to please everyone all the time… so don’t fret it when people unfollow you.
In regards to marketing opportunities… I’ve talked with people who are making a decent income… supplimental or primary income by using twitter as they would during a face-to-face network event.
Twitterzens tend to respond favorably when you are perceived as being helpful and concerned about their needs and desires.
I’ve enjoyed meeting many people on twitter for almost a year… some have become personal relationships and some have become business relationships.
Regardless of your reasons to live in the twitterverse… I’m always happy to discuss your personal and business questions about using twitter to your best advantage.
- Girard Frank Bolton, III.
follow me to http://twitter.com/gfb3
Keith:
Thank you so much for penning this post. It could not have come at a better time for me. On twitter, I am @tkpleslie and am trying my hardest to help retailers (specifically ones in furniture and home related industries to understand EXACTLY the point you are making here and the opportunity it represents for them to do business.
I am going to do my best to make sure all furniture and home related businesses read your post.
I am speaking for an hour this week at the High Point Furniture Market’s Internet Marketing Summit 2.0 and will use your post as a PERFECT example of what the opportunity is for them!
Again, thank you!
And hat tip to @chrisbrogan for RT’ing, 2!
Leslie, I suspect that you will meet resistance, but meet it head on. Businesses on that scale many times dont think about how one to one contact can actually translate into one to many as well as massive amounts of good will. Show them how Tony at Zappos has turned his company customer centric rather than balance book centric and conversely has added 1,000nds of percent to the bottom line there.
I know these businesses have agencies and demographic studies showing the power of advertising on TV, radio and newspapers, and I’m not saying to stop that. However, I am saying that there are massive missed opportunities in NOT engaging with your most passionate users and future evangelists.
Think about this: One customer may make a YouTube video (How-to or Viral) using your companies product. That video might get a million targeted views! Cost to the company? Essentially: Zero. Maybe it’s time to start enabling and listening!
Brilliant example of why contextual, intelligent advertising is going to win in the social media market. We want poignant advertising sometimes.
Keith:
I appreciate your comment re: Zappos. Tony is exactly the model I use when discussing this issue with retailers!
Here is what I recommend to furniture retailers (my industry):
1. Set up twitter account
2. See article called, 9 Useful Sites For Finding People to Follow on Twitter by Charnita Fance. (Excellent).
3. Use one or more of these methods to start following local people in your trading area.
4. Also use one of these methods to follow people by targeted keywords, such as “furniture” “mattress” “back pain” “moving furniture” , etc.
5. Start conversing with your local followers about issues of importance to THEM..do not broadcast your marketing message more than once every 10 tweets. Engage your followers in real conversations and help them get to where they want to go FIRST.
6. Over time, if you are authentic, consistent, helpful, thoughtful and generous- as Tony is from Zappos-your customers will reward you with the opportunity to serve them..and will tell all of their friends about you, too, if you do it well.
What could be better than loyal customers becoming your brand’s advocates -online and offline? Hail the day when furniture retailers really “get” the huge value inherent in using Twitter to listen to and connect with their potential customers. A revolution in retail will be under way!
I’m doing my darndest to lead the charge! Thanks for writing this- I cannot tell you how very glad you did!
L
I wonder if they are in fact hip to social media but have yet to see the real ROI – therefore hesitate to put resources onto tracking and building relationships here?
I like that you are asking these questions Keith. It’s important stuff to be thinking about, to be sure.
Very well written and timely for sure.
I’ve reacted at both ends of the spectrum. When people post how much they like “porter” (a small airline in Canada), I’m thinking that porter is missing an opportunity to fan those flames and I’ve actually told some of their staff.
However, I reacted negatively when I posted something with #priceline in it and got what looked like an auto @reply from @thenegotiator. That got me really pissed and I posted something nasty which is very unusual for me. It turns out it wasn’t an auto @reply and I was wrong.
The point is that if a brand is going to help me and is personal (i.e. there’s a person at the other end), then I’m open to it. However, it is a minefield and the trigger is very sensitive.
@isfan
Great article Keith!
Spam can be a problem, but twitter tends to nip them quickly.
Many business executives are reluctant to invest much time utilizing twitter because to them it resembles a gathering of employees around a water fountain not working.
Most business on twitter seems to be based on referrals.
Smart business leaders should adapt your viewpoints in their marketing plans and start tracking their ROI.
- Girard Frank Bolton, III.
follow me at http://twitter.com/gfb3