Trying to market yourself on Twitter can be tricky. Being a pushy salesperson, while never popular anywhere, is strictly taboo in Social Media. So how do you engage potential prospects while avoiding the appearance of a door to door vacuum salesperson?
I recently had an interaction with Kat from GoHeadBand.com who negotiated the art brilliantly. I had tweeted how difficult a 2 mile run for me had been in spite of running a mini-marathon just 5 months ago. She responded to me with encouragement and some advice. I was told to take things slow, but to remember that I will attain fitness faster because of my prior running.
As I don’t know this person, I was inclined to look her up on Twitter to see what she was about. Her bio mentioned that she had completed 5 marathons and she also made “moisture wicking headbands.” Since my most recent run was in 94 degree heat and I am fond of headbands, I now found myself as an interested prospect.
Not once has she offered to sell me anything, but here I am as a potential buyer. So what did she do right that we can learn about as we navigate the roads in Twitter?
- Search. She obviously had a twitter client, like CoTweet, where she was searching for keywords like “running.” This helps you identify a group with interests in your product.
- She offered Value. She not only gave me some friendly advice, to adapt to things slowly, but she also offered me encouragement. You can trace those lessons back to “How to Win Friends and Influence People” as classic relationship management.
- She had a great bio. Her bio told me a little bit about herself in that she was a runner. It also clearly defined to me what she specifically offered as a product or service including a website link.
Much of the advice available in the realm of social media is pointed towards telling us what not to do. While those lessons can certainly help us avoid some challenges, it doesn’t give us clarity on what we can do. I am thankful for this experience and I will definitely add this to my “rules of engagement” on Twitter.
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Todays guest post was written by Brian Richardson has 19 years of sales and management experience and is a sales trainer at ExactTarget. Follow him at B__Richardson (that is two underscores) and check out his Twitter bio for hobbies and interests.
Thank you for this! I have been selling on etsy and just started my own website a month ago. I had no idea how to market myself, I'm a single mom with no budget- so i decided to start using Twitter. I use it anyway to chat with other runners, why not market myself while I'm at it?
I try to do a few things daily- I do searches for runners and try to contact at least 10 new people every day. The rest of the time I write about myself and I respond to people already following me. I only have around 250 followers, but they are good quality and I genuinely love tweeting with them. When I come back from doing a long 20 mile training run, I'll immediately have 10 tweets offering me congrats and that feels good. I try to keep my tweets PG rated- funny stories about parenting, running, traffic, that sort of thing. I avoid any subject with religion, politics or swearing.
If I contact 10 people that's usually one sale. I don't know of any odds as good as that, even with cold calling which is a whole lot more effort. But best of all this is FUN.
Mikko, thanks for the kind words. Social media is so new, that even the advice given is typically very broad based in nature. "You need to have a strategy" people will say, but few are able to give examples of a quality strategy to learn from. Nice job Kat and I hope you get increased sales from this. Cheers, @B__Richardson
Brian, Twitter marketing is so new that many are getting it wrong, but Kat got it right! Good for her for having gained mastery at this craft. Good for you that she was paying attention. And, good for us that you were diligent to share your experience in this post. We all need to "get in shape" as it pertains to social media marketing engagement. This was very helpful.
Thanks for the insight Paul. I love the information you share and really respect your opinion.
Amber, thanks so much for your thoughts here. Genuine engagement and relationships… that is definitely the ticket. It's funny how the same principles we like to experience "off the net" are the same things we like to see "on the net." The people that I know who are most successful on Twitter are simply Tweeting what they are passionate about. It shows in their numbers as their followers continue to grow.
[...] was kind enough to ask me to write a post on the right way to market on Twitter which was regarding a conversation we had on a positive experience I had on Twitter. I was pretty [...]