Did you hear that? No? How about that? There it goes again. It’s the sound of people talking about you.
A recent study by Penn States College of Information Sciences and Technologies showed that 20% of all tweets mentioned specific brand names or products. Considering the amount of daily tweets, that is a ton. Now I realize that just because 1 and 5 tweets mentions a brand or product doesn’t mean a whole bunch without context. However forgetting that for a moment there is no reason you shouldn’t at least be listening to the conversation.
Too Easy To Listen
There are just too many ways to listen to for your company, brand or product not to be doing it. You can go to Twitter Search type in what your looking for and watch the conversations populate the results. Or better yet go download something like TweetDeck and put in several search topics. This allows you to watch conversations happen in next to real time. Listening to those conversations can allow you to react in a whole host of different ways. See a complaint? Help them. Someone has a question, answer it. Lots of positive feedback on your company, thank them. It’s the same type of thing you would do face to face, only better. You get to see what people are talking about and then engage them in a way that is most meaningful to THEM. This isn’t you bringing the marketing message that you want, its engaging your customers, or potential customers, on their terms. Immediately that’s a better position to be in then having to try to get someone to listen to what you want when they could care less.
Sounds Great But Does It Work
There are a wide variety of things I listen for on Twitter. However because we sell yachts, that happens to be a term I monitor. Several months ago I saw someone talking about wanting to put a group together to buy a yacht. I sent him a tweet that he should look at ours. Fast forward five months and we are on our way to closing that deal. Now would I have found that without Twitter? I doubt it. The fact that I was able to connect with him, shortly after yachts were on his mind, allowed me to get the opportunity to make the introduction.
So, start listening today, you never know what you might hear.
