How to Find Your Future Clients on Twitter (Startups, This Is for You)

I haven’t written one of those posts in a while, so:

1. If you’re against “hacks”, don’t read this.
2. I’m not advertising anything. Really.

(Before stumbling across this approach, I was desperately looking for twitter lists and using twitter search and channels, resulting in a lot of wasted time. There are three problems with this approach:

1. The people in those lists don’t necessarily need your product.
2. The people you find don’t necessarily need your product.
3. The people in those channels don’t… you got it.

Therefore what you need is people who need your product. Duh!)

So yeah… the new strategy is simple and fast. Just follow the steps:

1. Go to Product Hunt and search for tools your target users might find useful (not to mention the collections are pretty handy as well). Example: You’re promoting an ebooks platform. Search ‘ebooks’ and check out all the apps/products that come up.
2. Go to the product’s site and hunt down their twitter handle.
3. Go to the twitter profile, then to followers.
4. Manually follow every person you think matches your definition of target user. (I usually pick keywords -like CEO, entrepreneur, etc.- and follow those accounts as I scan down the list.) Don’t follow bots!
5. Wait a couple of days for people to follow back.
6. Go to manageflitter.com and unfollow those who didn’t follow back and start the process again. You can also branch out to searching for similar tools that would be of interest to your target audience and following their followers. The circle can go on forever. ☺

Disclaimer: Don’t follow 1000 people at once if only 100 are following you. You have a reputation to uphold. Pace yourself and do this right.

Simple, no? And it works like a charm.

And you? How do you build your startup’s twitter following?

P.S. Obviously, you have to provide value on twitter as well. Don’t expect people to follow you back for nothing. My pet peeve, for example, is startups who tweet and blog nothing but updates about their product. I mean, who cares?! Engage us!

To engage a following, I’d advise to:

• sound human
• tweet relevant content
• answer mentions quickly
• tune into channels like #startups and-
• tweet photos/screenshots

(Here’s a more detailed “twitter strategy” if you’re interested.)

P.P.S. On the subject of this being a “spammy strategy”, it’s up to you how you’ll pace yourself and how you want your product to behave on social media. I use this approach because it saves time in finding potential clients.