Social media has become a large part of many people’s lives. Most users access their social media accounts multiple times a day, and they use them to connect with others in all sorts of different ways.
It’s hard to imagine a world without it at this point, which is why I think it’s so important that businesses learn to leverage it to generate leads.
To begin our social media outreach series, here three tips you need to know when trying to connect with prospects via Twitter.
1) List Your Prospects
Before anything, you have to get to know your prospects better.
Create a private list of prospects on Twitter, and then stalk—I mean—observe them closely. You can add that list to Hootsuite to more easily monitor what kind of content they are sharing, favoriting, mentioning, and retweeting.
2) Engage With Their Content
Once you understand your prospects’ habits, you can post content targeted toward their needs.
An even better way to get your name on the map is to engage with their content directly. Consciously retweeting and mentioning prospects’ content gets them familiar with you. It creates a “warmer” lead because they will begin to recognize you.
Don’t go overboard with retweets and mentions. You don’t want them to think you’ll retweet anything and everything just to get their attention.
3) Transition To Real Conversations
Eventually, after you have built an online rapport with your prospects, you can reach out to them with a direct message to start a more private conversation.
Don’t get all sales-y just yet. As you continue the conversation, try branching out to email or phone to bring that conversation away from social media and more toward reality.
Few business deals actually get done over Twitter, so it’s important that you eventually move to a different communication channel.
With Twitter, so much can be done with so few characters. Start creating your lists today.
Have you ever reached out to a prospect on Twitter?