I know I’ve been on an outreach kick lately, but I’ve been having much fun with it. I wanted to go over a topic I don’t often see mentioned, which is finding opportunities that come to you first. Basically, when someone mentions your brand on their own volition and taking advantage of it. I refer to this as reverse outreach, because they’ve made the first attempt. These are great opportunities, because the prospect in question already has interest in your company or product.
Twitter Reverse Outreach Process
Ok, so I’ll jump right into what I’m talking about. Here is an opening mention I caught on my Twitter feed:
This thread quickly got a couple of responses.
Not only is this a mention of my company, but also a mention of competitors. I wanted to respond as quickly as possible so my competitors didn’t get a chance. Obviously they’re concerned by the cost and health factors, so I focused on these in my response.
One thing I regret, is undermining the competitors in the response. I by no means want to get on the bad graces of competitors. However, the competitors never responded to the entire thread, which makes us look far more caring.
The quick response gave me time to dive deeper into the profiles of everyone in the conversation. They all ran blogs and one of them ran a fairly successful blog. The person with the more successful blog also happened to respond positively.
So obviously, they’re still worried about the pricing. Since I’m a huge advocate for product reviews and they ran a decent blog, I jumped at the opportunity.
And I got a great response.
This spurred a great response from others who saw the conversation. People love seeing companies stay active in the social community. The end result was me getting a review of our product and a happy closing response.
The entire conversation with everyone involved was about 25-30 tweets long, but the above is the gist of what’s important. Because they already had interest in my company and I actively made an effort to show we appreciate them, I know I’m going to get a solid review. That’s why I consider these opportunities far more important than a standard outreach review.
Twitter Outreach Example #2
This is another example of a quick and easy one that worked out well. This was a person who reached out and ran both a solid blog and Youtube channel. To be honest, I’m still a little new to working with Youtube reviews, but since diving into it, it has driven a massive amount of traffic for us.
Conclusion
Always be on the lookout. There are outreach opportunities other than sending out several emails to bloggers and waiting for a response.
I know I’ve mentioned it a couple times above, but people Love seeing companies stay active on their social profiles. Make a conscious effort to respond to questions on Facebook and Twitter especially, because they Will be seen by several other users.
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Love this! It’s so awesome that you interacted with your prospects using social media. More companies should really get involved and use Twitter and Facebook to their advantage.
Glad you liked it. I agree that companies should be leveraging social media to their advantage. Unfortunately, it seems like most tweets to companies get no response.
I do something like this for clients. How do you track it Peter? I usually use https://en.mention.net/ and have a couple of different queries running (client name, competitor name, some specific conversation points etc.).
It’s pretty sweet actually :)
I’ve never heard of en.mention, but that sounds useful in this scenario especially. I use Tweet Deck and have several columns set up for different types of mentions and industry related terms. This way I can take a quick glance when I have a spare moment and see if anything new has popped up on the fly.
Ah ok, yeah give mention a shot; it’s cross-platform so it’ll give you Facebook/Web links as well.
I’m trying to shift to HootSuite for a dashboard but I keep going back to TweetDeck :s
Yeah, I used HootSuite for a while and I think it may make more sense if you’re managing several different accounts. I only manage a few, so Tweet Deck is easier for me. Plus it’s prettier :)
Great article Peter! Its always worth a reminder that in anything online, actual proper interaction is way more powerful than one way communication.
Appreciate it Jon and absolutely agree!