The Great Twitter Experiment – Listening for a Change

Posted by Phil on May 2, 2011 in Instructional / How-to, Social Media Marketing | 0 comments

Yep, we’re doing an experiment.  The Great Twitter experiment.  You see, large companies like Coke already had global brand recognition before they engaged in social media so it’s no surprise that they were able to quickly grow to over 26 million Facebook fans and tens of thousands of Twitter followers.  But what about the the little guy?  How can “Joe the Plumber” or any other small business owner grow their social media following?  And more importantly, how can the small business owner grow a quality following?  The one word answer is “relationships”.  And hopefully we’re going to prove that.

Why relationships?  Because that’s what social media is all about.  Sure, social media gives anyone a platform from which to spread the gospel of their business or their product, but who’s going to listen?  Established brands like Coke have spent billions of dollars to acquire their customer base and build their brand.  How can a small business do that on a small business budget?  Well, it’s not easy but it’s simple:

• Listen to what people are saying in and around your industry.
• Ask questions.
• Make some new contacts who share some of your interests.
• Grow relationships.
• Share your expertise.

Growing your following is so simple in fact, that for the month of May Denton Business Solutions is going to be listening for a change.  Rather than sharing content that we think would be useful to small business owners we’re going to be using the Twitter “Search” feature to actively listen to what people are saying and try to learn more about their technology challenges.  We’ll also be actively engaging with other people who work within some of our core competencies such as Google Analytics, Social Media, etc and work on developing some new peer relationships as well.

What we won’t do is self-promote.  We won’t post a link to our website or blog unless it’s in direct response to a person’s question.  We won’t retweet other people’s posts, and we won’t be tweeting any new content unless it’s in response to another person’s Tweet we found through searching on keywords.  We also won’t seek out new followers.  We won’t redeem any Twiends seeds or ask anyone to follow us.  We will continue to auto follow-back.

In summary, if we knew what the results of our experiment would be we wouldn’t do it.  Over the course of The Great Twitter Experiment we’ll be checking several metrics.  First off, the rate of Twitter growth, our Klout scores, and website traffic.  Secondly, we’ll be tracking other interaction escalation from Twitter to e-mail, phone, RSS, or web traffic.  All in all we’re pretty excited about what the month may bring.  If you have questions, comments, or predictions let us know.  Otherwise let the Great Twitter Experiment begin!