Are you using Twitter to find your fans and those who might be? To talk to locals? People from surrounding areas? New and returning tourists? Did you know you could use Twitter in such a targeted way? That’s one of my favorite parts, in fact. Finding new friends.
I’m going to make a few presumptions about the status of your Twitter marketing program. You’ve already followed everyone you know, right? You’ve already spent some laid back, watching-TV-time trawling through their follower lists; lurking and clicking into different conversations; getting to know your favorite hashtags and what kind of traffic appears in them.
You’ve spent some time refining your search parameters, for example people who follow and tweet with or about:
Local Interest
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city and state happenings, weather, major local festivals;
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local TV stations and town newspapers;
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local chambers of commerce, associations, tourist traps of all stripes;
Other Shared Interests You May Have
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suppliers, like farms, CSAs, and microbreweries, if you’re a restaurant, say;
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vendors, like local c-stores, gas stations, and farmer’s markets, if you’re a dairy selling cheese, say, or an apiary selling honey;
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you get the idea.
You’ve already invested time in an ongoing campaign of worthwhile, quality Tweets that educate, inform, inspire, tickle, delight, and reward your followers. You’ve already hung signage around the shop that lets your customers know where they can find you online for special offers, promotions, and events.
You’ve followed (and followed back) everybody who is a real person who might be remotely interested in your offerings. Why? Because people like to be known. We all like the way it feels when somebody “gets” us. Less so when that somebody is a brand. But, check it out! Mom and Pop shops and Main Street marketers are in an enviable position to bridge that gap, because consumers know you’re owned and operated by real people from the same community. Not some faceless Mr. Moneybags on Madison Ave.
How to Talk to Locals and Generate Buzz
Use the Advanced Search tool, built right into the interface by the friendly folks at Twitter. All the cool kids are doing it, including Jeremy Brown over at Marketing Profs. He does a great job explaining how to use the search; you’ll figure it out easily on your own when you spend 15 minutes to playing with it. I want to spend some time brainstorming how to use what you find:
As a jumping off point, let’s crib from Jeremy’s example of a brand new small business owner who has just opened their first cupcakery. Nommmmmmm, cupcakes. An advanced Twitter search on “cupcake,” “recipes,” and “designs” in the “any of these words” field and “http” in the “none of these words” field yields results that tend to be conversational between bakers talking about their favorite pastime, sharing recipes, asking questions, giving advice. One woman tweeted that her friend just got a silicone baking set and a new recipe book and that she was “OMG SO JEALOUS.”
What might she do, this Twitter-savvy baker, if one day she received a colorfully wrapped, brightly labeled package containing your favorite recipe book, new, but with a few important notes learned from your hard experience marked with post-its? If you’re the owner of the new cupcakery, that is. Well, if she’s very savvy, after she follows you, she’ll post a photo of the beautiful gift, mentioning you and tagging #cupcake. She’ll visit your retail location the next time she needs supplies and visit your Twitter the next time she needs inspiration.
Let’s think of some other examples of Twitter outreach and relatively inexpensive word of mouth generators.
1. A health and wellness store sends a neti pot starter kit to a local who tweeted about their chronic post nasal drip and how they’re tired of sounding like a Yeti. They include a note that says, “We look forward to hearing from You, and not a Yeti, soon.”
2. A natural foods store sends an organic meal-replacement bar, sourced from a local bakery, to a local triathlete who complained that he couldn’t stomach another Power Bar. Ever. Again.
3. A gourmet pizza shop DMs a family keeping vigil at the local hospital while their youngest undergoes extensive surgery. Offers to send over a pizza, just tell us what you want on it.
4. A kite shop on the beach keeps an eye on off-season tourist talk, recruiting new people to the region and the sport by chatting them up and receiving permission to send along a copy of their favorite beginner’s guide. They don’t send it to everybody who mentions kite or beach or summer vacay, just those who are clearly social-savvy, who have a large and engaged following, who hold a position of some stature in their own community.
5. A nail salon replies to a local teacher who broke her arm and a few of her nails when she fell on the ice earlier this week and offers a free hope-you-heal-fast mani in a color that matches her cast.
6. The owner of a hair salon sees a teenager getting ready for prom and freaking out because she can’t her hair right. She tweets back, “Can you make it in on the day of and we’ll take care of it for you, no charge? One less thing to worry about on your big day!”
7. The soup trailer in the downtown food court teams with their favorite pedicab driver to deliver several pints of complimentary chicken soup during cold and flu season to Twitterers who didn’t know their draggy day was about to get a little more doable.
8. The proprietor and guide of a kayak and canoe rental shop can’t very well give out free passes like candy. The margins are all wrong for that. But, he can chime in on Twitter convo’s with incentives including special trips not mentioned on the website, special packages that include gourmet riverside picnic lunches where he cooks for you.
Although a gift isn’t always necessary, the idea of gifting strangers for buzz isn’t new. It’s exactly what the Klout Perks program is, except those efforts aren’t local and it costs those business thousands of dollars just to get access to the people who might like a surprise. Twitgift.me is another budding service helping brands connect with strangers on Twitter through gifts.
If you’re a small business, all you need is Advanced Twitter Search and the savvy to ask those people to shoot you their mailing address in a DM. An added perk is that in order to DM you, they’ll have to follow you. Two birds with one stone!
Tell us some of your ideas!
