3 Ways to Find Prospects Using Twitter

Need more leads and prospects?

Looking for creative ways to generate leads with Twitter?

Because Twitter is discontinuing lead generation cards, now is the time to put new lead funnel techniques in place.

In this article, you'll discover three ways to find your next customers on Twitter.

3 Ways to Find Prospects Using Twitter by Andrew Pickering on Social Media Examiner.

Twitter is a fountain of opinions and questions, and one way to tap into these is through Twitter Advanced Search. Imagine someone tweeted, "Anyone know a good photographer in San Diego?" and you happened to be a photographer in San Diego. Wouldn't this be the perfect person to connect with?

Twitter's Advanced Search function lets you search for relevant comments so you can jump into the conversation, pick up that lead, and turn it into a sale.

Use Twitter Advanced Search to find tweets relevant to your business.

Think about all of the different opinions and questions your target audience may have and run advanced searches on them regularly. For the San Diego photographer, here are some other phrases potential clients might be tweeting:

I hate my headshot.I need some new product shots.Finding a wedding photographer is hard.How do I improve my LinkedIn profile?

Depending on your niche and specialty, the potential tweets could be endless, and Twitter's Advanced Search makes them easy to find.

Search for Relevant Tweets

Go to Twitter Advanced Search and you'll find a ton of options for your search. The All of These Words field will return tweets containing your search term in any order, while This Exact Phrase will find tweets containing your search in the exact order you specified.

Enter your search terms in Twitter Advanced Search.

You can also search by accounts, location, and the "mood" of the tweet. For example, if you own a local organic coffee shop, you may be interested in finding tweets near your location that mention Starbucks in a negative light.

You can also add a location and "mood" for your Twitter search.

Once you've found relevant tweets, interact with the tweeters. The best way to start a conversation is to reply to the tweet directly. You'll get better results than if you just like the tweet or retweet it and simply hope the person notices you. If you run an organic coffee shop, for example, you might tweet people a coupon for their first purchase.

Set Up Email Notifications With IFTTT

Searching for relevant tweets on a regular basis can be time-consuming, especially if you have a lot of potential searches. However, have no fear; Daniel Knowlton let us in on a handy If This Then That (IFTTT) hack for this.

IFTTT lets you create a time-saving applet to automate your searches. Then whenever a tweeter uses qualifying keywords or phrases, you'll get an email notification. Boom!

To set it up, create an IFTTT account, click My Applets at the top of the page, and then click New Applet.

Click New Applet on the My Applets tab.

Next, click +this to set up the trigger (the action that triggers the automation). Then choose Twitter as the service and select New Tweet From Search as the trigger.

Choose New Tweet From Search for your IFTTT applet's trigger.

Next, type your search term in the Search For text box (for example, "Photographer in San Diego") and click Create Trigger.

Type in your search term and click Create Trigger.

Next, click +that to set up the result of your trigger.

Click +that to set up the action for your IFTTT applet.

Then select Email as the action service and Send Me an Email as the action.

Select Send Me an Email for your IFTTT applet.

On the next page, click Create Action. You'll then be asked if you want to receive notifications every time the applet runs (whether it finds a new tweet or not). If you want this to happen, turn the switch on.

Decide if you want to receive notification anytime your IFTTT applet runs.

Finally, click Finish and you're done. You'll start receiving emails every time someone tweets your chosen word or phrase, and you can repeat this process for all of the keywords you came up with!

Although the Twitter lead generation card is gone, you can still use Twitter ads to drive traffic to pages where you give away content in return for an email. The key is to have a great giveaway that qualifies people. You don't want to pay for Twitter ads to promote a giveaway everybody will want; you want to attract potential customers!

To get you started, we'll show you a short tutorial for setting up a simple Twitter ad campaign. Twitter ads are relatively simple to set up compared to ads for Facebook or Google AdSense.

First, set up your account with Twitter Ads and click Create Campaign.

Go to Twitter Ads and click Create Campaign.

In the left sidebar, click Website Clicks or Conversions (it might also be labeled Website Visits). Then click Create Campaign on the right.

Select the Website Clicks or Conversions option to set up your Twitter ad.

For the first step, give your campaign a name and decide if you want your ad to be shown only on Twitter or on the Twitter Audience Platform, too. You can also set up conversion tracking here, but for this simple demonstration, we're going to skip that part.

Fill in these fields to start setting up your Twitter ad campaign.

For the next step, choose the audience for your ad.

You can set basic targeting options like age, gender, location, and device; and you can also set more advanced targeting such as keywords (users who tweet certain words), followers (people similar to people who follow specific accounts), interests (accounts tweeting about certain categories of interests), and more. Use these criteria to narrow down your audience.

Describe the audience you want to target with your Twitter ad.

For example, you can target the audience of Buffer's account, as well as your own following and users like your following.

You can target your ad to the followers of another Twitter account.

Also, choose whether your ad will be shown only in timelines or also in profile and tweet detail pages.

Next, decide how much you want to spend on your campaign, per day and total. The minimum daily budget is $0.01, but Twitter gives you estimated reach and website clicks depending on your budget size. You could test at $2/day for 5 days and measure performance before scaling up.

Set up your Twitter ad's budget.

Now you're ready to create your ad. The beauty of Twitter ads is that they're simply tweets, so you have 140 characters worth of text to work with. Create your Twitter card with the link to your giveaway, add a headline, and choose an image. When you're finished, hit Publish Tweet and then Launch.

Build your Twitter ad.

You'll also want to have a remarketing pixel on your website. Then once people leave your lead magnet landing page, you can serve them follow-up ads to get visitors to buy or opt into something. The idea is that by serving your ads to people who've already been on your site, your ad cost should be lower than serving ads to a cold audience.

Twitter's live-streaming app Periscope is now embedded within Twitter's mobile app, making it easier to go live. With live broadcasts, you can show your audience the real you and let them chat with you in real time.

Live video is a great opportunity to show people your offering, rather than just tell them about it. After all, seeing is believing, right? Think about how you can go behind the scenes for your product or service. Show viewers how to use your product, people's reactions to it, how it's made, the team behind it… all of these kinds of things can build trust in your offering.

We don't recommend going straight into a full-on sales pitch all of the time, though. Remember, it's about offering value and building relationships first.

Going live is easy from within the Twitter app. Tap Compose a Tweet and then tap the Live icon.

Compose a new tweet and tap the Live icon.

Finally, give your stream a title and hit the Go Live button to start broadcasting.

Tap Go Live to start broadcasting on Twitter.

Initiating Conversations With Prospects

Twitter is a truly open social platform, which is what made many of us fall in love with it in the first place. In recent times, though, with all of the scheduling tools and automation, it's lost its way from what it used to be, especially for B2B.

Here's what the Twitter strategy seems to be for most marketers: share lots of other people's articles, tweet blog posts a few times a day, drop in a couple of promo tweets, slip in some hashtags, set up Twitter lists they'll never check, and automate the whole thing within an inch of its life… not forgetting the auto DM.

Scheduling tools and automation have depersonalized Twitter to some degree.

Ouch! It seems like this is becoming the norm and it's diluting what Twitter is all about.

The good news is that you can use this to your advantage. Imagine getting a Twitter video message out of the blue from a stranger saying, "Hey, I've just been reading your blog, I loved your article about ______." How special would that make you feel? It's mind-blowing the effect this has on people because nobody expects it.

So the mission for you is to go hunt down your target market; engage with people proactively; and ask friendly, open questions to start conversations. More conversations lead to more potential customers and leads.

Don't go for the sale right away, though. Social media is about relationships, so add your targets to Twitter lists and keep proactively engaging with them until they raise their hand as a lead.

To make sure you check your Twitter lists, change the Twitter link in your bookmarks to the direct link for a Twitter list feed. This way, every time you click to go to Twitter, you're actually going to the feed of people you need to be engaging with and you might as well do it while you're there!

Save a link to your Twitter list as a bookmark.

Tip: If you use Hootsuite or similar software, why not set up a column that shows your Twitter lists, too?

The key is to build relationships with people and then take the conversation off of Twitter. Send them a message asking for a quick 10-minute call to find out more about each other.

Conclusion

Even though the lead generation card is no more, you can still effectively generate leads on Twitter. Do you need to use all of the tactics above? Probably not. Pick the ones that work best for your business and focus on doing those well.

What do you think? What's your preferred way to generate Twitter leads? Are you doing something that should make the list? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

3 Ways to Find Prospects Using Twitter by Andrew Pickering on Social Media Examiner.

View the original article here

Original source: 3 Ways to Find Prospects Using Twitter.
http://www.jretechnology.com