Twitter Research Formula

Spent quite a bit of time ramping up on Twitter tools and techniques recently.  My goal was to learn how to use Twitter to research a market and connect with potential buyers, influencers and market participants.

Using the system outlined below, in the span of one week, I was able to more than triple my followers, drastically improve the quality of information flowing both into my Twitter account and (hopefully) flowing to my followers.

After 6 weeks, my followers had quadrupled and the quality of information flow has improved greatly – as has the traffic and readership of my blog and visits to my websites. After a couple of months, my followers had doubled again, so I’m certain this process works.

So I have outlined the tools and process I used to achieve these results and increase my influence and understanding of buyers in my marketplace.

Tools:

• TweetAdder – Automates follows and unfollows to grow a targeted followership
• Topsy.com – Twitter Tweet search engine, for finding tweets based upon keywords
• Twellow.com – Twitter bio search engine, for finding people in your target area of interest
• Tweetdeck.com – Twitter monitor portal
• Google Keyword Tool – for researching keywords in your target marketing
• WeFollow.com – Register at the user-powered Twitter directory

Twitter Research Formula:
1. Create Twitter account (or use your existing one); Note: each account is initially limited to 2,000 follows

2. Make a list of keywords in your target markets or area of research

3. Use Google Keyword tool to find and refine keywords (if you don’t know your audience’s keyword namespace)

4. Validate keyword / topic trends using Google Trends (optional, esp, if you’re looking for a growth market)

5. Use Topsy.com to locate tweets in your target market using keywords

6. Use Twellow.com to find people in your target market by title, interests, etc.

7. Register your top interest tags at WeFollow.com and locate top influencers

8. Follow people in this market, learn the vernacular, their interests, blogs they read, sites they frequent, etc.

9. Read the same blogs your target audience is reading (they’ll pass links to these blogs in their tweets)

10.  Post useful and valuable comments on the blogs (with links back to your blog/website)

11.  Tweet the best posts for your followers to learn from and get value from

12.  Open up deeper conversations with selected followers, sending direct messages as appropriate; schedule phone calls to discuss common interests, opportunities, etc. with interested parties; exchange contact info (email, phone, etc.)

13.  Create interesting posts about the target market’s interest

14.  Create your own blog around your target audience’s interests

15.  Retweet your target audience’s posts – be a good human “filter” and only retweet the best, most relevant

16.  Create your own tweets that provide value to your audience

17.  Reveal something about yourself occasionally, including links to photos or other interesting things about you

18.  Write a free e-book and use to get yourself established with the target audience and market as an authority

19.  Occasionally lob in a Tweet linking to your money-magnet, landing page or product page (to make some $)

20.  Once per week, unfollow anyone who isn’t following you after 5 or more days (using Huitter.com Mutuality)

21.  Rinse, repeat as necessary

For example, in my case, I am interested in connecting with other forward-thinking executives, business owners and leaders involved in high-tech software, technology and online marketing.  My purpose is to learn as much as possible from others like me who have adventured into social media as a business tool for inbound marketing.

So, I used Twellow.com to locate people with the keywords “product marketing”, “VP marketing”, “CMO”, “CTO”, etc. in their bios.  I also added everyone with “product launch” in their bio, since product launches is an area I specialize in.

I’m using TweetDeck to organize and track areas of interest. For example, I have set up an automatic Search in TweetDeck for keywords “product launch”, which automatically locates anything related to product launches taking place.  Then as people post about product launches I can efficiently track it all – following as appropriate, DM as appropriate, etc.

Whenever anything of particular interest pops up, I use Topsy.com to quickly search through all relevant Tweets to learn more and ensure something important hasn’t “scrolled by” while I was away.

Finally, so there’s always targeted action on my behalf taking place to grow my Twitter followership, I have automated follows and unfollows (of those who don’t follow me for a week after I follow them) using TweetAdder. I do not use the automated DM’s, which are time-wasters and borderline spam. I recommend spending some time sending personal DM’s to those who you’re following as appropriate instead.

So that’s a quick overview of how I’m approaching market research growing my followership with the “Twitter Research Formula”.  Would love to hear how this compares to your own approach, and how you would suggest this formula be evolved and improved.

Happy Twittering!

– Rick

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