While it's well known that Twitter is a great marketing tool for
online businesses, not many marketers realize its importance as a
medium to bring strong relationship with local media. Twitter is a
blessing for small businesses and is heavily armed with a set of
powerful tools for local marketing.
How can Twitter help you build relationships with local media?
Let's find out.
Find your neighbors
It is easy to find users and businesses in your neighborhood using
the Advanced Search feature on Twitter. You can enter the postal
code of the desired region and specify the distance for target
region in miles/ kilometers. From the list of tweets, search the
people whom you want to follow and send them a Follower request.
In my opinion, it is advisable to search for local media and get associated
with them on Twitter. This can help spread the word about your
business in the local community.
There are a number of third-party tools which can effectively
locate Twitter users in your vicinity. I personally like ChirpCity
and NearbyTweets for finding Twitters users in my local community.
Create a Community
Once you've found the target customers in your geographical
proximity, the next step is to engage them actively with your
business. I recommend creating a community of such local users. A
community offers a win-win situation for all parties - your
customers get a platform to interact amongst themselves and with
your business and you benefit from the reduced risk of people
losing interest in your business and un-following you.
Getting connected to Twitter users in your local area is of no use
if can not sustain these relationships. Communities are a great way
of ensuring that your relationships do not die down as time passes.
Do not forget that your competitors are also trying hard to steal
the limelight in local media. Getting local media engaged with your
business can be beneficial to you and provides a competitive
advantage.
Twitter Trends
The Local Trends feature in Twitter is one of the most
effective ways for a business to monitor its online reputation.
It's a free service and mighty effective in determining how well or
how badly your business is doing on Twitter, what is the local
community tweeting about your business and what is their opinion
about your local competitors.
Many small businesses build products for the local community.
However, they find it difficult to narrow down their target
customer base to areas in geographical vicinity for their location.
Twitter allows such businesses to focus on local areas and identify
potential customers in the local community.
Local Events, Product Launches
Spread the word about local events and new product launches on
Twitter. Encourage your followers to retweet these messages so that
it reaches out the maximum number of people. This is a great way to
build a buzz about your product in the local community.
Further, make sure that you participate actively in the relevant
local events (business Meetups, conferences, road shows) and spread
the word about it on Twitter. This helps establish your brand's
reputation in the local media.
Twitter has now reached a landmark figure of 15 billion tweets and
sees nearly 2 billion tweets every month. This should give you an
idea of Twitter's amazing popularity and the massive potential for
promoting your business in the local media. If you are not using
Twitter to build relationships with local media, you are missing
out on a big opportunity!
CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF THAT SAYS, "IT'S LONELY AT THE TOP";
IT'S LONELY AT THE TOP ONLY WHEN YOU FAIL TO TAKE OTHERS ALONG.
To your success!
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