UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging

Chapter 19. Local Twitter

"WELL, TWITTER IS good for you, Scott. Your market can be anywhere in the world." And so it begins. Another reason given why a business claims it doesn't need to engage with its marketplace by using social media.

Whenever I speak to geographically based businesses we always end up talking about whether Twitter and other sites are valuable when your customers are all close by. For example, why would a pizza place in Dallas care about connecting with someone in Toronto?

Fair enough. I do understand that when most of your customers are within the range of local transit that they should be your first focus for marketing. However, connecting on a large scale with people in the same industry outside of your competitive geographical area is a smart thing to do. It allows you to share best practices and solve problems without taking away local market share.

If your business is "local" there are four things you can do to help you focus your Twitter efforts:

1. Use a keyword location-specific search in Twitter for people in your area.

   Many people suggest using keyword terms to search for potential customers, but it doesn't work well for a local business. When you put the name of your city or town into the search with your business type, the tweets that come up would have to include both (i.e., I need a massage in Toronto versus I need a massage). Such a specific search may not be fruitful, so the way to solve this issue on Twitter is to do a search using the term "near." ...