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SCKattered Thoughts

Getting in with the Right Crowd

Jan 8

By: Will Montgomery on 1/8/2010 1:22 AM

A few days ago, a good friend of mine was reading a book on Western Philosophy at the tanning salon where she works. A guy walked in and stated that she didn’t seem like the type of girl who would read things like that (new pick up line?). Being a well-read English major, she took offense to this and naturally tweeted about the situation. As a joke, I responded saying that I didn’t think anyone who worked at tanning salons could read, which, at least got a chuckle. The next day I open my email to find that two tanning companies thought what I said was fascinating and wanted to follow me. Needless to say, I was quite confused.

Twitter has become one of the largest social media services and can certainly be used to get a company’s name out and find potential customers. The tanning companies that decided to follow me made a fairly common mistake by not understanding to whom they were marketing and just wasting their and my time.

While using Twitter, or any other social media service, to find customers, it is important to find the right ones. Just because a company has a million fans or is following thousands of people (or banking on the spit ball theory of following to get followers) doesn’t make it any better than a competitor. This isn’t high school. While a company’s page may have a massive amount of followers/fans, how many of those people are actually interested? How many are people who are just too lazy to block the company? How many are people just trying to pad their numbers to look better?

Companies using social media need to do a little more research into each person they are trying to get the attention of. Most companies don’t sell the same kinds of products to outrageously different demographics do they? Programs like Tweetdeck allow searches for keywords and even allow users to see the profile of the person found in the searches. By buckling down and finding out a little about the person to be followed, a company can increase the chances of getting a qualified prospect, or at least someone who will follow and maybe even reweet what is said to their like-minded friends. The follower is already unknowingly helping out and cutting down the work load!

Taking a couple extra steps instead of doing the equivalent of handing out flyers will show a return in investment in the form of a new follower and if all goes well, a new customer or subscriber. Use social media to support a marketing plan, not just because everyone else is doing it.

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