How to make customers out of people who do not follow you on Twitter
When participating in social media, specifically Twitter, you can easily turn people into customers even if they do not follow you. You can do this by proactively answering the questions that they pose.
So how do you find people who are just asking their general Twitter audience for help about something related to your niche? How do you answer them? And how can you get them to be your customers as a result of doing this?
Finding potential customers on Twitter
Go to Search.Twitter.com and type in a question mark on the search field. When you hit Search, a results list will display all the tweets that contain a question mark. The page refreshes about every 20 seconds or so and tells you how many more people have used the question mark since the last time you searched.
Many of those questions may not be relevant to you or your business. What you can do to weed out the inconsequential tweets is to perform a targeted search. Write whatever topic you want, plus a question mark, and then hit Search. Check the results every 5 to 10 minutes and see how many times people are tweeting about that term.
If the results show thousands and thousands of tweets, then that is a pretty good indicator that many people are interested in your particular marketplace or that particular term online.
How to use MarketMeTweet to find customers automatically
You can also find potential customers using automated tools such as the Twitter client MarketMeTweet.
On the main dashboard, click Add a Pane. Find Search from the drop down menu and enter your keyword plus a question mark. The program will automatically find tweets that contain your keyword and a question mark somewhere in that tweet.
It may not be a question about your particular topic, it could be a question about something else, but this is a good way to find potential customers.
You can learn more about market research and the most effective strategies on how to go about it using Twitter on Module 7 of the Social Profit Formula.
Answering Twitter questions proactively
Let’s say you’ve found a couple of question tweets that you feel are related to your niche. What do you do? How do you reply?
First, you can answer their specific question. Provide informative, helpful answers without pitching about something you want them to buy.
Second, you can point them to a resource. Suggest a blog post or a page that gives them a detailed answer to their particular question.
Lastly, you can offer to help. You can say, “I am an expert on this subject. I would be happy to help you. DM me.”
Your objective is to start building these relationships by participating in conversations proactively.
You don’t even have to do this yourself. You can outsource the work if you can train someone to find potential customers and answer social media questions appropriately.
