Twitter is all the rage today. Oprah’s on Twitter (@Oprah, with over 1 million followers). It shows up in late show monologues and has even made an appearance in the daily comics.
What exactly is Twitter? It’s a microblogging service, which means you’ve only got 140 characters to get your message across. You follow people and businesses that you’re interested in – from your Aunt Sally to your mechanic – and people and businesses follow you back.
A lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make money with Twitter, what’s the ‘killer app?’ A new AdAge article shows that Twitter really can be a way for local businesses to drive real sales.
There’s a pizza place in New Orleans called Naked Pizza. They recently started tracking sales that come from Twitter and an April 23rd test run showed an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of that day’s sales. In fact, a growing number of local places seem to understand the power of Twitter. I personally follow a couple of my favorite local restaurants and they use their Twitter feed to tell me daily specials, happy hour promotions, and more. My locally owned radio station Tweets concert announcements and upcoming special programming. Even the local bead shop sends out new products, class schedules and Twitter-only special deals.
The AdAge article gives more examples of local business Twitter success stories, and some great tips on how local businesses can use the service. So how does this help you?
Take a look around Twitter yourself, if you haven’t already, and see what everyone is talking about. Do some local searches with Twitter Search – you can search your city or town, or search a specific keyword in your area like this: Pizza: Columbus, OH to see what people in your market are saying about a certain topic. Why not search some of your clients and see if anyone in the Twitterverse is talking about them? Think about your clients or prospects. Who could use Twitter to drive sales? Suggest they take a look at Twitter, too.
You’re a consultative sales person, and the more you help your clients drive business, the more indispensable you become. And that’s what we all want, isn’t it?
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Michelle OBrien