Twitip

Many companies like Dell or Moonfruit have discovered Twitter as a separate sales channel. Both use rather similar strategies: They either offer special discounts or work with giveaways to attract followers, drive traffic to their sites and boost sales. In 2008 (when Dell was one of the first companies to use Twitter as a direct sales channel) the social network had made Dell over $ 1 million in revenue already.

Actually there are many ways to use Twitter to increase sales and enhance your business. One of them is to scan the network for negative feedback surrounding your competitors in order to then contact the dissatisfied individuals with an alternative offer of yours. Here is a step by step guide on how to poach customers using Twitter:

1. Set up a Hootsuite account (Tweetdeck works too) and add a new tab – you can call it “competitors”.

2. Click on the new tab and and choose “add column“.

3. Now pick “search” and use the following syntax to scan Twitter for negative feedback about a competitor:

“Competitor’s name” negative-term OR negative-term OR negative-term OR OR ? OR negative-term

Here is an example using “Dell” as my competitor:

“Dell” sucks OR hate OR OR ? OR problem OR issue OR expensive OR broken

(The “:(” will show you all tweets that contain a frown and the “?” will show you tweets where the competitor’s name is mentioned together with a question)

4. Click on “Create Column“. Now the column is going to update automatically with all tweets containing your competitor’s name and one of the above specified negative terms.

5. Repeat for other competitors or possible variations of their names.

6. Scan the tweets that appear in each column and look for messages like this:

“@XXX Yeah they do but a few of my friends have Dell laptops and they have broken after like a year. I want a good one. My PC sucks! :O(“

7. Now you have two possibilities of contacting the two potential customers you just found (the author and the person the tweet was directed to). You can either “join” the conversation by using @reply, informing them about a great new offer of yours for an item that could cover the need or the problem expressed in their message. In this example a discounted offer for a high quality notebook could wake the interest of both individuals. Be careful though! Your competitors will be able to see your @replies and if you do this too often you might be perceived as disruptive and spammy in general. @replies do have the advantage though that they can be retweeted and can generate additional buzz.

8. If you prefer to contact the individuals discreetly using direct messages you first need to make sure that those people follow you. In order to do that your safest bet is to follow them first. Often people will (automatically or manually) follow you back – especially if the person’s number of followers is close to the number of people he/she is following. Then you can write a direct message to the potential customers including your offer. You will have to find a middle way between DMs and @replies – as DMs often aren’t read due to the number of automated spam emails clogging everyones’ inbox.

9. The most important rule here is to be personal. Adapt your offer and your message directly to the people you’re contacting and to the particular conversation you are referring to. Anyone who uses Twitter on a regular basis will have an eye for automated DMs and @replies and will ignore them as quickly as they pop up. The only way this strategy can work for you is if people don’t label you as “spam” and that will only be the case if you take the time to write personal messages.

More Twitter tips and guides can be found here.