HOW TO: Use Twitter to make sales. An example.
Say you have a spa and salon. Say that spa and salon has a good location and great people. Let’s say… oh, just for hypothetical purposes? the spa is in Louisville, Ky. But it doesn’t have a ton of word of mouth…buzz. Say you’re the owner of that spa and salon and you don’t have a lot of green right now to spend on AdWords. Or radio. Or…much. But you’re doing your best and you want to do some in-bound marketing. Generate some buzz and sales. It’s the way to go, elbow grease. So how do you start?
First of all, I’m going to tell you, Mr Spa and Salon Owner, to actually care and be authentic to people you’re going to reach out to. Make connections and don’t just sales pitch. People do know the difference. Authenticity is important and I know you are overworked. But it will be better for you to actually connect with and listen to and engage with and care about 5 people than to sales pitch 500 people. Trust me. You will really see more return. This is true.
So that said… you could try this. You could listen on Twitter for things like “bad hair day” or “need massage” or “wedding” or another buzz word that might signify someone has a real need you can fill.
Go to http://search.twitter.com and click “Advanced Search”
Enter your search term, ie “bad hair day” or “wedding” or “facial” and down the page, enter your city and the radius you’d like to search in.
click the RSS feed button for this search, it is the orange one in the picture below:
and load it into your RSS reader so you can track it in the future (I use Google Reader) Then you can just watch your saved searches in your reader. You can also use TweetDeck. You can do as many of these as you like. The key to Twitter is listening. You hear me? Let me say it again. The key to Twitter is listening.
And then follow those people who you can actually help, do not DM (direct message) them with a sales pitch, but you could nicely (politely) send them a public @ message asking if they would like to try your services. Let them know you saw their lament about their bad hair day. Offer them a coupon. Be nice. Care. Do not send a sales pitch, be a person. A nice one. Actually look at who the person you’re contacting is. It is very VERY important that you treat people on Twitter the same way you would treat them at a cocktail party. “I couldn’t help overhearing your problem, can I help?” is acceptable. A DM with a sales pitch is not acceptable, that’s like going up to someone at a cocktail party and beginning a sales demonstration ala the ShamWow guy in the middle of their conversation with someone else. It is that obnoxious.
Listen. Care. Offer. Rinse. Repeat.
Are you listening?
