Being Cheryl: Social Media Marketing Tips from Columbus, Ohio

Twitter is an invaluable resource for marketing and public relations professionals, largely because of the promotion and relationship natures of the network. Many already take advantage of the fact that they can ask their own network for feedback and suggestions,  but are you taking advantage of the OTHER  research that Twitter can offer you? Here are a few examples:

1) Competition’s Conversations: Visit http://search.twitter.com. Enter a company’s Twitter name. Not only can you follow what THEY are saying, you can also follow what EVERYONE IS SAYING TO THEM. It’s like hacking into their e-mail database, only completely legit. Monitoring @replies to your competitors and their employees will help you develop your  OWN Twitter strategy by allowing you to see a) what they are doing and, more importantly b) what people think about it. Recently I did this for a client of mine who is looking to sign up for Twitter. I realized their competitor had recently asked THEIR network what content they wanted to see from the company on Twitter. So, I did a search of @replies to that company. That company is not currently putting any of these suggestions into action- I pulled the 25 different responses, and my client will be. And first.

2) Pinpointing your Publics: Every business has one or two target industries to which most of their efforts are devoted. Do you take advantage of the tools that make finding people in those industries easy? Again, using search.twitter.com to monitor industry-specific keywords is useful, but check out http://twellow.com. This site automatically categorizes a Twitter user into 1-3 industries based on their bio and Tweets, and allows users to set up to 13 categories or industries themselves manually. Let’s say your target is healthcare. Search for “healthcare” - you’ll get both people in this industry and people who claim to specialize in working with it. Localized company? Search “healthcare ohio.” Ding ding ding.

3) Remaining Relevant: Want to see what topic is on the most people’s brains today? Look at the chart on TweetStats: it will show you the most frequently used words so you can be a part of those conversations (you know, when appropriate.)

I asked Twitter users how THEY use the network for market research and these are some of the responses I got:

@iclimer: i have a constant search up for my main clients. See what people are tweeting about.

@mattwunderle: I am Monitoring twitpic for picture views related to keywords. What drives people to look at a photo?

@threefourteen its all about the RSS feeds. Set up good RSS feeds for topics that you research. Use tweetdeck for groups.

How do YOU use Twitter for research?