Using Twitter as a Lead Generation Tool

Twitter is a fantastic tool for lead generation, if you know how to use it.

The most frequently used method for lead generation is to watch for brand or topic mentions and then to identify the user and their measure of influence (e.g. Klout.) That can work to find people actively mentioning the brand, but what about the silent majority? Those silent Twitter users that may be active but don’t tweet?

This silent audience is one that still has plenty of value for consideration. The phrase ‘actions speak louder than words’ is most appropriate here.

Like email lists of old, we are looking for people with a propensity to be interested in your particular brand or topic.

With it’s open nature, the followers of any Twitter account can be seen. With a little patience you can simply scroll through all the followers of any account.

You could use some tools like DataMiner to scrape the data into a meaningful table. This would be a good start, but Twitter restricts a lot of the data you may want, like followers and following. You could export the Twitter followers to excel and run your own magic.

Followers of just one account become more useful if there is a comparison. For smaller accounts you could try followerwonk to gain an overlap of two or three accounts. Accounts that follow three accounts (e.g. airlines) could start to create that table of ‘people with a propensity to be interested in travel.’

You could take this a step further to build a much larger dataset. People that follow some brands and not others. For example, if you are looking for luxury consumers maybe a cross section of people that follow @hunterboots @bsapphireginuk and @bmw would give you some targets. If you can grab that data and export it you could start filtering by stated location, interest or biography.

Looking at an overlap of UK Auto brands found the majority of users that followed all brands were journalists. Great if you are looking for motoring journalists not so great for potential car buyers.

This follower mapping also helps to understand potential affiliations or interests between accounts. Here is an example we ran for the UK elections.

All this data overlap is great but how do you harness it?

Create a Mailing List

One of my most frequently asked questions at BirdSong is, “how can we get email addresses from Twitter accounts?” The short answer is, you can’t. Twitter don’t provide them so you can’t get them from any provider. There are of course workarounds. Combining Twitter data with email lookups could give you email addresses associated with the accounts but comes with a health warning. Read ‘How to get email addresses from Twitter accounts’ if you need some suggestions.

Follow Them

That’s an obvious one. Pick some accounts you are interested in and follow them. They get a notification of your account with full bio and profile. There is no guarantee they will do anything as a result but you have ticked the awareness box. It can be time consuming but is the most ‘free’ of all options.

Advertise to Them

Twitter Advertising enables you to create tailored audiences. You can create and upload your own list of leads and create bespoke ads. Compare this to other standard Twitter advertising options to assess performance. This guide will help you create Twitter Tailored Audiences.

In Conclusion

Never has there been such a great tool for lead generation. With a little bit of work and the right tools you can find a potential audience for your brand or product, no matter how niche. From a basic level of just exporting competitor followers through to more advanced audience mapping there is an audience waiting for you.