How To Use Twitter To Find New Clients & Customers

Twitter is an incredible marketing tool for so many small businesses, but so many businesses use it totally wrong!

It’s not about how many people are following you or how many people you follow.  It’s about helping and solving people’s challenges and offering useful insights without necessarily anything back.  It’s about monitoring real time conversations about your company or brand or relative services and answering them in real time.

Watch this quick tutorial (above) on how to use twitter search to find prospects just screaming to use your services and/or products.

What you want to do is go to www.search.twitter.com and click on advance search.

Click on the filter that offers “places” and enter where your local business and a selected how miles away from that area you want to monitor conversations.  Now you type in challenges people are would be having that relate to your business.  For example:

If your plumber, type in keyword phrases like:

• toilet clogged
• basement flooding
• shower busted
• no hot water
• plumber
• need plumber
• etc

And Wham-mo! Real time people looking for your services.  And guess what, a lot of people have twitter connected to their phones.  Send them a message.  Up the ante and send them a discount coupon with a deadline.  Do leads like this get any better?!  I think not!  And if you get back to them fast, you’ll most likely score the business.

Some Other Twitter Prospecting Examples:

If you’re handyman, type in phrases like:

• broken step
• damn ikea furniture
• sink tap dripping
• handyman

If you own a flower shop, type phrases like:

• anniversary
• birthday
• funeral
• funeral viewing
• died
• RIP
• mother’s day

If you offer immigration services, type in phrases like:

• green card
• visas

If you offer massages, type in phrases like:

• need a massage
• so tired
• overworked
• need a break
• need a nice gift

If you are a Travel Agent, type in phrases like:

• need a vacation
• need a trip
• vacation time coming up

If you own a Tattoo Shop, type in phrases like:

• tattoo
• got a tattoo
• hate my tattoo
• want a tattoo

You get the idea.  There is no shortage of people who are announcing to the world in real time on Twitter that they need your services.  All you have to do  is tune and make them an offer they can’t refuse at the right time.  As they say, “Timing is everything” and “The early bird gets the worm”.

Track It

Find the keyword phrases that convert for you and then take that search term’s RSS Feed(s) in Twitter Search and subscribe to them using your Google Reader so you can stay up-to-date and organized in one place.

Tell us in the comments below how you plan to  use Twitter search to find local clients?

OH! BTW, Don’t forget to Follow Us on Twitter Here.

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