In my first post in this series (which was never written), entitled "7 days of Twitter", I discussed my 7 day experiment using Twitter to decide if it could become a fun or worthwhile tool. In a nutshell,
- I joined Twitter
- I installed Yoono, a browser sidebar which allows for pop-up alerts and easy access to my Twitter feed and Facebook feed, and the ability to post to one or both of those without going to each site and waiting for pages to load, etc.
- I followed anyone in my address book who had a Twitter account, and began to manually spider those accounts to find other people who seemed active and/or interested.
- I discovered how "ADHD" I could become, as I became attacked by a barrage of Tweet alerts, each one grabbing me away from my work, often teasing me enough to follow a link to read/see more.
- I was in the middle of hundreds of Tweets about how Gmail was not working for them, or down altogether, and somehow felt "plugged-in" to this exclusive network of people who are in "the know" up to the second. I began going to sleep later and waking-up earlier just to check my feed and see if I missed anything.
- I resented Twitter, loved Twitter, dropped lots of annoying Tweeters, added a few more, would going on long Twitter binges, and then shut off the app so I could get hold of my life… repeat.
- I wish there was a happier ending.
Anyway, the other day I thought, "can I find my next client on Twitter?" I looked at my feed, but didn’t see any clients there. Most people expect the opportunity to hit them in the feed, but chances are it won’t happen. So I turned to search.twitter.com, punched in my keywords, and started browsing. Around 3 hours previously in the timeline, I found a few Re-Tweets and the original Tweet, looking for someone just like me. (A Re-Tweet is passing on a message to your network which you deem spread-worthy.) I went to the author’s page, checked out his website, filled out a contact form, and kept searching. A little later I got a message back with a phone number. I followed up, sent a quote, yada yada yada, I didn’t get the client. But the point is, if you’re going to be proactive in reaching interested clients, here’s one more free and still not over-saturated method (based on my experience).
Do you think it’ll work for you?