Local marketing is big business for small businesses everywhere. The more in tune a business is with their community and the people around them, the more likely they will be to pull those people through the door. While this can be filed under common sense, it still doesn’t solve the big mystery; the question beckons: how do you find local customers?
Social media has been touted as one of the most valuable tools for small businesses due to the fact that it is an affordable (free) marketing channel that is being used by on a daily basis by people everywhere. This doesn’t mean that every social network can be measured the same — each has its own code, or rules of engagement. While Facebook is by far the most popular choice for small businesses, it doesn’t allow for spontaneous conversation or interaction.
In fact, Facebook doesn’t even allow brand pages to interact with personal profiles, period. So, unless these people are showing up to your fan page, you’re a bit out of luck.
That leaves us with the same question:
How do you reach out to potential customers directly without committing a social media faux pas?
You use Twitter.
Twitter + Hootsuite + Google Maps = Instant Insight
Fortunately, there is a very simple way to gain valuable insight into potential influencers right outside your door and in your neighborhood. And the best part is you can pull this off with free tools. To follow along with this step-by-step guide you should do the following:
- Create a Twitter account.
- Sign up for a free plan at Hootsuite.
- Install the Hootsuite browser extension.
- Fire up Google Maps.
The goal here will be finding influencers in your local market that are relevant to your niche. You should create a Twitter list specifically for this purpose, so you can refer back to it later.
Next, what you’ll want to do is make sure that you have installed the Hootsuite browser extension for Chrome. After you have done that, head over to Google Maps so we can run through the whole process together.
Finding Influencers With Twitter, Hootsuite and Google Maps
Rather than simply explain theory, let’s take a real world example and see how we would approach finding influencers, step-by-step.
Let’s create an example using a travel company in Sacramento. This travel company focuses on booking cruises and honeymoon destination packages. It’s safe to assume they want to find people in their local area that would be interested in their services.
The first thing they would want to do is type their business name into Google Maps. If you do this yourself, as soon as the search results pop up you should see an orange button that says ‘Tweets Near Here’. Click that and then scroll through the search results on the right to see if your business has been mentioned recently. You can also move the slider over to expand the coverage area of the search.
Hootsuite integrates with Google Maps to show tweets by location.
If you do not uncover any results there is still a good chance you pull something up searching on Twitter. You should first look there, as Hootsuite, at times, will not pull up older results. It’s good to know who has talked about your business, so let’s take a look.
Use Twitter’s search function to see who is talking about your business.
You will want to type your business name in between quotation marks (i.e. “Your Business Name”). This is important as it tells Twitter you are looking for an exact phrase match on that search term.
As you can see above, the travel company we are following has had a few people mentioning them on Twitter. What they would want to do is add them to their ‘Influencer List’ so they can monitor their tweets to find ways to connect, and hopefully encourage more engagement down the road.
Thinking Outwardly
Now, we are going to start thinking outside the box to find people that could potentially be interested in our services.
When you think of travel, what comes to mind? The airport! Type that into the search bar on Google Maps and follow the same process by clicking the button and looking through what comes up. More than likely you will find plenty of people who are travellers.
Use keywords to find target personas in your area with Hootsuite and Google Maps.
Clearly we have just uncovered some people on the move. Nearly every tweet from this location is relevant to travel. If you were trying to boost engagement, you can come up with a catchy quip or simply tweet a farewell to encourage brand interaction. Don’t put too much thought into it, just have a conversation. As you can see, they are doing just that:
@mspcowboy home to @Starbucks, the grunge rock scene and a space needle — sounds like an awesome trip! #seattle #nirvana #coffee
— ShipsandTripsTravel (@shipsandtrips) January 20, 2014
More Examples
You can also pinpoint other areas that may give perhaps an even better lead source. If you recall, this travel company also focuses on honeymoon destinations. This is a highly specific target market. There are plenty of other businesses that cater to newlyweds, or the soon-to-be:
- Wedding Planners
- Bridal Galleries
- Photographers
- Wedding DJs
You can also research your competitors using the same method. The benefit to searching with Google Maps is you’ll often uncover people who use both Twitter and Foursquare. People who ‘check in’ to local businesses are usually far more engaged with social media and more likely to have a large following.
Monitoring and Targeting
There are two ways you can drill down and get a steady stream of good leads. First, you can use these keywords to perform the same search using Hootsuite and Google Maps. You would click on each business, and check out what tweets are happening in that area. This will help you uncover a few potentials, but an even easier way to automatically find your influencers is to set up streams in Hootsuite to monitor who is tweeting to your competitors.
First, you are going to want to create a new tab in Hootsuite. We can call it “Tweep Monitor” or somthing like that. Personally, I do this to monitor competitors, and I also do this to monitor a few good Twitter handles that are good at putting out content. This helps me get inspiration and ideas.
Once you have your new tab setup, we are going to want to set up some alerts in our Hootsuite dashboard. It’s very easy. Just follow these steps:
- Authenticate your Twitter account
- Create a new tab and label it “Tweep Monitor”
- Choose the ‘Search’ icon
- In the search box enter: to:username
You’ll now be able to quickly see who is tweeting to your competitors. You can also do the same thing using from:username to monitor what your competitors are tweeting.
Pro tip – Go the extra mile and create a new tab that displays all of your competitors blogs. Use the RSS Hootsuite app for this and enter in their feed. That’s it! You’ll have a tab to check what your competitors tweet (and who is tweeting back) and another tab to see what type of content they are posting.
I’ve told you my secrets, tell me yours. Let me know the tricks you use in the comments!
The post How To Build A Highly Targeted Twitter List Using Hootsuite and Google Maps appeared first on Rivalhost Blog.
