The Branching Out Europe app of the month for March 2015 is the Twitter search tool Followerwonk. There have been many articles written on how to use Twitter for business, but the reality is that a large majority of B2B organisations struggle to gain real commercial value from the social media platform. There are a few applications available online that allow you to use Twitter in a more strategic business sense, and Followerwonk does this by helping you to find and target your prospects. However, unlike its competitors Followerwonk provides this functionality free of charge.
What is Followerwonk?
Followerwonk provides advanced search options for Twitter, helping you turn the social media application into a valuable lead generation tool. By providing advanced search options, you can use Followerwonk to target Twitter users by specific keyword information and their location. To give you an example, if your target market were electricians, and you were located in London, you could use Followerwonk to find all London based electricians that are using Twitter. This is one of the most effective ways of finding your prospects online.
As you can see from the search I carried out above, Followerwonk has instantly found 327 profiles that are located in London, and have ‘Electrician’ in their Twitter bio. These users are also ranked by their ‘social authority’, providing you with an indicator to the most influential accounts, such as those who actively use Twitter or have large numbers of followers.
How to use Followerwonk for lead generation
Once you have this list of potential prospects, you can use the information to help your business in a variety of ways. Firstly you can use these contacts as a research sample of your target market. Simply spend some time monitoring these accounts to better understand how your target market interacts online. This research can provide insight into your prospects’ pain points and what content they prefer to engage with and share. Once you have this data you can then build a marketing strategy that will make the most of it. Target these users with content that makes their life easier and provide information they would find interesting. You can even use Followerwonk to contact any high value targets directly through Twitter. This is exactly how we use Followerwonk at Branching Out Europe.
Why Followerwonk?
The profile search functionality that Followerwonk provides in their free version is more comprehensive than that offered by competitors Buzzsumo or Topsy. Both these online applications provide very good insight into Twitter users, however you’ll need to subscribe to their paid options to gain real value in a business sense. Followerwonk on the other hand provides you with all this information for free. If you think it’s needed you can pay for more detailed search results, Twitter analytics and integration with Twitter and SEO software. However, for most, what is provided in the free version will be more than enough to help use Twitter in your lead generation activities.
Conclusion
In a B2B environment, gaining real commercial value from social media is always a challenge. If your target market are on Twitter then Followerwonk allows you to find them, and in doing so gain insight into their online behaviour. This information can be used to help direct your marketing strategy to target those prospects and generate new business. If you’d like to find out more ways to use social media for lead generation you can download our eBook below that shows you how to use LinkedIn to generate new business.
