I’ve been wondering how a twitter stream can help a business, so I thought I’d try a quick test on twitter. First a bit of background…
I run a business!
It’s called Vida (or various other names I choose to call it) and it’s always been a vehicle to allow me to have lots of fun doing interesting projects for companies like Gap, Honda, Isuzu, Coke, Unilever and Tesco. Mainly working through other agencies, as Vida doesn’t have a large sales and marketing budge and I never really wanted to employ people. I have 2 kids and I’ve seen them grow up to be 6 and 8. Best choice I’ve ever made.
Now my kids are in school, I’m thinking it’s probably more important to build up the company, so I need a new Sales and Marketing approach.
Crowd Sourcing Business Consultancy via Twitter
I have around 250 people on Twitter who follow me. I also post my twitter feed to Jaiku, Friendfeed, and Facebook, so lots of people read my twitters. I’ve seen people ask questions on Twitter and get very useful responses, so I thought I’d try it. My question was:
if you were to start a company now, what would be your tips for lead generation and sales?
I then direct messaged a few people to ask for their responses. I got several very interesting ones. Some of the answers are picked out below:
martinpacker @pjnet Sniff around the tragedies of others? 
epredator @pjnet share everywhere work a freemium model and see every person on every network as customer trust serendipity
NikkiPilkington @pjnet SEO, online networking and article marketing – work hard to build brand and reputation
stevepurkiss @pjnet network, network, network…
rooreynolds @pjnet asks “if you were to start a company … tips for lead generation and sales?” – be Interesting. Don’t treat social media as marketing
PBJohnson @pjnet but SEO is easier to grasp than networking … so easier to outsource?
epredator @pjnet if you attract people they are the right people you may have to alter the “product”
NikkiPilkington @pjnet fair enough – I misunderstood “reserve of small biz”
SuButcher @pjnet think about the client/user/purchaser. What are they thinking? What do they want? Where will they go to get it?
epredator @pjnet “no publicity is bad publicity” social media and long tail engagement seems to offer opportunity to engage with customers new and old
Other Comments
I also received several direct messages, and one of which caught my eye. Roo Reynolds sent me 2 links on Interestingness, one from his own blog and one from Russel Davies which I think are stunningly good links on how to be interesting as a person:
how to be interesting A brilliant and timeless blog on how to attract people
Russell Davies well worth a read to give Roo’s take on Russell’s ideas
So What Now?
So, I’ve had lots of advice, and I’ve generated lots of ideas. I personally think that SEO is far from useful when going after large corporate accounts, but I see the purpose of it. I do think however, I’m going to remember to blog more, and make myself more interesting!
So watch this space. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be more interesting.
2 comments
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October 8, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Andy Piper
Thanks for the DM and apologies for not responding at the time.
My first response was going to be about context – what is the business intending to do? I don’t think any method of lead generation can be entirely generic in nature.
I also agree with the comments that social media != automatic marketing opportunity, particularly without engagement. It’s the reputation in these spaces that counts… and that reputation can definitely be built with a sense of fun and interestingness.
Look at “new” brands you might like… ones that spring to my mind are companies like MOO, innocent, and Timbuk2. What have they done to stand out? They’ve been interesting. They’ve been fun. They’ve engaged with consumers. They’ve managed to get others to be brand ambassadors. They’ve used social media off the back of those things. Without trust they built up first, they wouldn’t have got so far (IMO).
More than 140 characters, and probably sounds derivative based on the comments above. I guess I’m just backing up those views at this point.
October 9, 2008 at 8:47 am
Paul Johnston
It’s interesting that you’re the first person to pick up on the “what is the business?” point. There isn’t a context to the question and it was intentionally generic. However, I think it shows a lot about the demographic of people that use twitter, and what they assume the “company” would be.
Everyone likes the way that MOO, innocent, Timbuk2 and others do it, but in essence, they are just a printing company, a drinks company and a bag company. Twitter as well is essentially just a messaging company. What they all have in common is a created company personality.
Maybe that’s more about PR, perception and attraction, and that’s just part of something very old fashioned called the Marketing Mix.
It’s interesting to note that very few of the comments are directly about what the question asked, namely lead generation and sales. If this was asked in a more corporate context, there would be very very different answers.