Recently a colleague forwarded me a recording of a social media webcast featuring Guy Kawasaki titled “Exploring the Power of Going Social” that was originally hosted by WebEx on May 12th, 2010. For those that are not already familiar with Guy Kawasaki, he is the founding partner of Garage Technology Ventures, co-founder of Alltop, an accomplished author and a former Apple Fellow. Whatever you do, do not call him a social media expert – he does not believe these individuals exist – rather he is someone that is successfully using social media to achieve results.
The goal of this webcast was for the audience to learn how to use social media to increase the reach of their business using these fast, free and ubiquitous online tools. The focus of this discussion was how companies could leverage Twitter to grow their businesses. Like many, Guy’s first reaction to Twitter was that it was “filled with a bunch of people with nothing to say, talking to people with nothing to do”. After several weeks, he began to uncover several ways marketers could use Twitter.
The Power of Twitter:
- Search/Monitor Conversations - Twitter offers excellent search features that allow you to view the conversations revolving around your company and its competitors in real-time. TIP: To view all the conversations about your company and its competition simply search using the “OR” feature (Note – OR must be in all CAPS). For example, “Kodak OR Canon” will show you all the tweets containing mentions of Kodak or Canon. In addition, you can view all the conversation from or to an individual/company by using from: and to: in the search field. For example, “from:Kodak OR to:Kodak” will show you all the tweets sent from or to Kodak.
- Engagement – Twitter provides an easy to use platform to interact and share content with individuals. TIP: Follow @cleveraccounts to see examples of the different ways that individuals/companies are using Twitter.
- Selling – Most people are familiar with the success that Dell has experienced selling products on Twitter through the use of promotional tweets and promo codes, however @kogibbq is another example of a company taking advantage of Twitter to support and increase sales – every day Kogi uses Twitter to announce the location of their Korean BBQ Taco trucks. NOTE: It is less about the number of followers you have but rather the importance of having followers that really care about your products.
- Support – By actively monitoring and providing customer service, companies can assist customers in a timely fashion. Two prime examples of this are Comcast and Best Buy.
- Prospecting – By using Twitter’s advanced search features you can find individuals within your geographic location that are potential customers. For example, the following search query will show you all the individuals within twenty-five miles of Philadelphia that mentioned the word photography – “photography” near:Philadelphia within:25mi TIP: You can also use Google to find potential customers on Twitter by using the following search query intext:”bio * photography” site:twitter.com – this will provide you with a list of Twitter profiles that contain the word photography in the BIO section of the account.
The webcast concluded with Guy stressing the importance of gaining a large following to market to and engage with. Similar to Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s notion of becoming a “trust agent” by adding value to the community, Guy Kawasaki believes that you must be “fascinating and enchanting” and the best way to achieve this is by sharing interesting content – through this you will become recognized as an expert. The key is finding content that your audience will enjoy and ReTweet as he deems this the greatest form of flattery on Twitter (it is also an excellent way to extend your message to your followers’ connections). He offered three great resources for engaging content: 1) StumbleUpon 2) SmartBrief 3) Alltop.
Finally, Guy noted that he believes the biggest social media mistake made by companies is failing to use social media because of concerns about the potential backlash. His suggestion – jump right in and learn firsthand which tactics work best for your company.
This was certainly a very informative webcast and I would encourage you to take the time (roughly an hour) to listen at your leisure – you can access the on-demand version here. Please be sure to come back and share your thoughts.
Author: Brian Rice
Great ideas. A lot of those we never thought of.