Use Twitter to Contact Influential People

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Here is a tip from Gabriel Weinberg who just got his company, Duck Duck Go, on Time’s The 50 Best Websites of 2011:

In Harry’s case, I checked my email and I don’t believe I ever wrote him personally, nor have ever met Harry in person (though I’d like to!), or even talked to him over the phone. We have communicated via Twitter, however.

Here’s a secret. Twitter is severely under-utilized as a communication channel. Lots of very influential people are on there, and some that don’t have big celebrity names or sites behind them actually have very few followers. That means that your interactions with them are more likely to be noticed (assuming they use/check Twitter).

5 Comments

  1. This is sooo true!

    It also works for customer support. If you tweet to Comcast/DISH you actually get a reply in under 5 minutes.

  2. This is right on the money. I have better success with reporters via twitter than over the phone or email.

  3. The key is to contact people over the channel where they have extra bandwidth.

    How many emails is a reporter getting each day? Hundreds. Thousands. Twitter (or another social network) could be where they go to escape from the noise. Identifying and using that channel is the key to initiating contact.

    When I was the sales manager for an educational media company, I spent the longest time calling leads and getting a cold shoulder from assistants, secretaries, partners, office managers, etc. Finally I realized that everyone was calling to schedule an appointment. I had picked the most overcrowded channel.

    So I switched strategies. I showed up at the Superintendent’s office and had a quick 3 minute chat with him to tell him what I knew about his challenges and that I’d love to meet to learn more about what was happening that I could help with. I closed my largest sale ever to that customer a month later.

    The trick? Finding the channel with available bandwidth. Sending communication through that. It could be email, it could be social media, it could be at the country club, it could be at the office. Wherever it is, identifying the channel where they go for distraction and play is a great first step.

    Thanks for a great post, Rishi!

    • Kai – That is an awesome comment. Thanks for sharing that story.

      So, let me get this straight? You would physically go out and walk into the superintendents office… like a door to door salesman? WOW that is incredible!

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