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One of the most fun things about working at a search engine marketing company is that we get to play with a variety of social media tools everyday, and we've made no secret that plenty of the Fathom crew uses Twitter on a regular basis, and not just to praise our favorite Chinese restaurant.
As Twitter is a great conversation/collaboration tool, I recently used it to inquire about the community's experience with a specific piece of software. As this software was fairly common in the marketing/PR world, I got some anecdotes in a fairly short period of time. Impressed with how social and cool I was* I stored it in my memory and went on with the rest of my day.
Three hours later, I received a call from a competitor of the very software I tweeted about earlier. When I asked the gentleman where he got my name, he immediately told me his colleague found my discussion about his competitor on Twitter. While the gentleman didn't specifically tell me how his colleague came across my conversation, I'm guessing it was through the Twitter Search function (formerly Summize).
By going to search.twitter.com, anyone can search Twitter conversations about specific topics like your company or competitors in real time. Another cool thing about search.twitter.com is that you can monitor that term effortlessly by subscribing to an RSS feed for that specific term (look in the top right hand corner of your results page). While, in my mind, this would be best used for customer service, reputation management and competitive intelligence purposes, it never occurred to me one would use it to scour for (and contact) potential customers.
All that aside, using this strategy for mining potential customers may not the best use of a sales team's time. For example, not everyone who uses Twitter uses their real name and even if they do, finding their employer and then their contact information may be a wild goose chase. Even after all that research, that person might not even be a decision maker.
Taken aback by the company's sleuthing, however, I did schedule a demo after reviewing their website and product. So while I wouldn't recommend this strategy for everyone, I would certainly recommend people try out search.twitter.com and see what the results look like for your own company. At the very least, you'll learn if your company is worth talking about.
*Not true
About the Author: Comments
3 Comments so far3 Responses to “Twitter, now a lead generation tool?”
Dominec,
Thanx for that Twitter RSS tip. I use another twitter tool now, but your idea could be better.
Joel Libava
Cleveland
Thanks for sharing this revelation. It's always good to see original ideas for online marketing, especially those that take advantage of new technology. Keep that spark of ingenuity going, Dominic!
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