Business Link

When making a search online for your business, am I right in thinking you would go first to Google? Having proved what an amazing search engine it is, Google is the World’s No:1 choice. But is it the best for you and what you are trying to achieve?

You may be surprised if I suggested Twitter provided a better search that could lead you to potential customers!

You see Google is a great search engine, but it only leads you to websites, facts and information. Twitter, on the other hand, leads you to the people who are talking about what you’re searching for. Let’s take an example. Suppose you are someone who has just designed a new board game and you’re looking for leads that might help you begin to market and sell the game.

You could search on Google and get thousands of results where board games are mentioned in websites. However, on Twitter, you would get results that let you eavesdrop into conversations where real people are talking about board games. They could be players, retailers, manufacturers, developers, who knows? The important thing is, they are real people and for whatever reason, board games are in their conversations.

You then have an opportunity to engage with these people. You can tweet them personally and enter into the conversation. Maybe you could ask a question about board games, or share a piece of knowledge or information with them. You might even be able to answer a question for them.

What your Twitter search is doing is enabling you to find these people, engage with them and join in their conversation, add value to it and even offer resources and further information. It is also enabling you to understand how your consumer talks and with practise you can learn to listen and search for that on Twitter.

What haven’t you done? You’ve not gone in guns blazing, trying to sell to them. Go-getters will fail on Twitter, whereas Go-givers will win respect.

When you’ve engaged, shared, helped and got to know them, you will be in a far stronger position to market your product or service to them and they will give you the space and time to listen to what you have to say, because you’ve earned their respect and trust.

I follow just over 600 people on Twitter. There are a few that only ever tweet when they have something to promote. One person, who tweets regularly, only ever seems to be promoting networking events they are putting on. I will probably unfollow them, as they offer me no value in terms of information, help or just plain friendship. Reading plugs for events is just not interesting!

There are others I follow who in 15 months I have got to know really well. They’ve never sold me anything, but they’ve shown me a lot, shared valuable insights, provided advice when I was struggling and on many occasions have made me laugh with witty banter and rapport. Some have shared their amazing holiday photo’s (twitpics) and a few have even tweeted me to ask if I was OK, because I’d not tweeted for a week or so. Recently, I contacted one of them about a possible piece of work I knew was needed to be done. She didn’t pitch to me, but I had got to know that she is an expert in her field and just what my client was looking for.

Another Twitter friend is a journalist who writes for national publications. I needed some contacts in two or three of the major national daily newspapers. She was more than happy to put me in contact with her contacts, because we had taken the time to get to know each other through Twitter. She also knew I was genuine, because we had discussed my work through Twitter. The contacts she provided were of the highest calibre too!

So, next time you need to find out something, try using Twitter and see what sort of results you get. I would thoroughly recommend downloading Tweetdeck from www.tweetdeck.com  This free application will enable you to manage your searches and results far better than Twitter and then keep track of your new contacts’ tweets.