Business
Welcome to the Euro Digital Partners Marketing Insights podcast. I am Sean Patterson and this is the third in a series of podcasts about Lead Generation. First, an announcement about Euro Digital Partners. We are looking for a few good business developers. People who have a little extra time in their schedule who can arrange introductory calls. We will take care of the rest and enroll the clients, for which you will be handsomely compensated. Key will be good on the phone, so a little charm and charisma will serve you well. We will even show you how to use the techniques and tools needed for success. So, if you or someone you know would be good for this role, head over to eurodigitalpartners.com/jobs So, with that in mind, let us continue with the Euro Digital Partners series on Lead Generation and in this third part, we will discuss how to use Twitterand an online question and answer service, called Quora, to help you develop great leads. The challenge with Twitter is to find the right people. Read through the hype though: it isn’t just a megaphone for the US President or Kim Kardashian. Tons of great people are on Twitter, including influencers that can potentially assist in creating buzz about your firm. After you find the right people, however, it’s all about engaging them, which can start with following them or taking part in a thread, or series of tweets from different people. Sending tweets yourself is part of the deal when it comes to Twitter. Just lurking around on certain hashtags or on certain people is an inadequate response. There are a few eccentricities about Twitter which I would point out because they are common oversights. First, stick to using one or two hashtags per tweet, no less and no more. Second, keep in mind that when you start a tweet with the @ symbol followed by a user handle, the message will go directly to that person. Third, keep your tweets short. Twitter now allows 280 characters but do not use them all, and really do not leave your message to span more than one tweet. People do not have time to read your loquacious statements even if you are the President or Kim Kardashian. And finally, if you are including a link in your tweet, be sure to track it using a service like Bitly or Google URL Shortener. When it comes to digital marketing, tracking is everything! You can use Twitter’s search functionality to find people using relevant hashtags, keywords, or use LinkedIn to find interesting professionals. Using Twitter effectively for lead generation requires a significant amount of time, but if done right, it can yield great results. Also, be sure to use the “Lists” feature in Twitter. You can develop lists based on the industry or region you might be targeting. You can also use tools like Tweetdeck to streamline the process a bit. One of the cool things about Listsis that you can re-use the list to promote to a specific group of people on Twitter. Lead generation is not merely contacting someone out of the blue, it is just one step of a sales funnel. If you have developed a solid list of say 1,500 twitter handles you can export that list from Twitter, clean it up in Microsoft Excel, and then re-upload it to the Twitter Ads side of Twitter. Why you cannot directly import a list is a terrible oversight in the system, but if you import the list and filter out the cells that do not start with the @ symbol, you have a perfect list of uploadable Twitter handles. Then save that list to a .CSV file, and you can easily upload that document as a new “audience” in Twitter. Once Twitter approves that list, you can develop an advertisement targeting that audience. Let us move on to the second part of this podcast, which is using services like Quora for lead generation. Quora is the foremost question and answer service on the internet. It uses crowdsourcing and peer reviews to provide the best answers to user questions. At Euro Digital Partners, we use Quorafrequently because it can be a great source of new sales leads. Your customers are already on Quora trying to find answers to the problems that your firm solves. If you go there to help them, you’ll generate leads from delighted users. Euro Digital Partners is already using Quora for lead generation. We have used it recently to promote an affiliate program for one of our partners in the financial sector. A couple of things about Quora: First, do note that the first 50 characters of your profile are shown above each answer you post, so use the space carefully. Second, you can also use different “credentials” for your various answers, which helps to establish you as a reliable “authority” on a particular topic. For example, if you used to work for Apple, and like to answer questions about technology, you would boost your authority by citing your work experience at the tech giant. If you are answering marketing questions, cite your credentials with your current marketing firm, assuming you are doing business development for a firm like Euro Digital Partners, that is. Let me leave you with a top tip: as I said in the second part of this series on lead generation, make sure you clean up your profiles. It might seem like overkill to keep hitting on this point but we have seen so many people lose business because of this that we’d be remiss if we did not discuss it again. On that note, do be sure to fill out your profile complete and include links to your various online profiles. If you have a website, or even your own podcast, promote the hell out of that thing. So that is the third part of the Euro Digital Partners series on Lead Generation. If you enjoyed this section about Twitter and Quora, like us on Twitter (we are at EUDigitalP), Facebook, and LinkedInand subscribe to the podcast and our YouTube channel, and if you have comments or suggestions, email us at info_@_eurodigitalpartners.com. We would really love to hear from you. Find more insights from us online at https://www.eurodigitalpartners.com/insights Finally, check out SEMrush. If you have not before, head to http://beatyourcompetition.onlineand get a free 7-day trial. This podcast is sponsored by the Beat Your Competition Online course. Learn more at https://semrush.beatyourcompetitiononline.com.