Listen to the Twooting podcast where I’m interviewed about finding local people on Twitter.
Use Twitter to find and connect with customers near your business.
Over the last few weeks, a small pizza joint in New Orleans has made a splash in the technology news. Naked Pizza identifies itself as an all natural pizza with no preservatives or additives, which makes it a healthier pizza. The moniker “naked’ describes it and catches your attention. But the unusual name is not the reason why everyone is talking about Naked Pizza. What really sets Naked Pizza apart is the way they use Twitter to impact their business.
Naked Pizza On Twitter
Naked Pizza focused on finding Twitter users within three miles of their restaurant, and use Twitter to engage their customers and neighbors. In a scan of their Twitter timeline, you find them joking with customers, and including pictures of customers in the shop. I looked specifically for coupons or discount offers and didn’t find any in the last few pages of tweets. That doesn’t mean that they don’t offer discounts on Twitter that I didn’t find, only that discounts are not their primary message.
Naked Pizza does offer an outstanding example of a small local business that figured out a smart use for Twitter. If you run a small business, check out what they did and borrow some of their brilliance for your own Twitter strategy.
One key element of the Naked Pizza success is finding local Twitter users. If finding local Twitter users would help your business, there are several ways you can find them.
Nearby Tweets
You can use Nearby Tweets to find people on Twitter near any location on the planet. Type in the street address (or just the city) and the distance, and Nearby Tweets displays a list of Twitter users in that geographic area and their recent tweets.
Twitter Advanced Search
The Twitter advanced search form allows you to find users by geography. You identify a location and give a range of miles from that location. You can enter a street address, a city, and other types of location identification. The results I found were somewhat inconsistent, with a search for Phoenix pulling in some people clearly identifying themselves as being in California. It’s not perfect, but it is a great starting point.
TweepSearch
This tools allows you to search for a specific word or phrase that appears in Twitter user profiles. The results for this search depend on how people enter their location information, and your creativity (or diligence) in thinking of all the possible ways it could appear. For example, they might omit the state, spell out the state name, or use a two-letter state abbreviation. It doesn’t check just the location part of the profile, so if someone mentions another location in their description, that would be in your search results as well. It doesn’t allow you to focus into a specific area around the location.
Twitter Grader
Twitter Grader has a feature that allows you to see the Twitter elite in each city. These are the top 50 Twitter users according to their Twitter grade. If you live in a large metropolitan area, these results may be too far from your business to help, but are worth reviewing. If you live in a smaller town, you can find some great results here.
The advantage to using this source is that you find people who are successful Twitter users with a large following. One retweet can expand your reach to many other people whom would have been harder to locate through other means.
Twellow
Twellow is primarily a Twitter user directory, but they have a local search feature that allows you to search through the directory listings for your location information. I found different results here than I did from several of the other search options, so I thought this was a valuable addition to your toolbox.
Other Ways To Build Your Community
If you want to build your Twitter community based on your business location, there are several other things you can do.
- Include your Twitter username in your advertising, including your business cards.
- Put up a sign when people enter your business that includes your Twitter information.
- Post a sign on your building or consider renting a billboard to post your Twitter information for people driving near your location.
- Offer to host a tweetup if this is appropriate for your business. This will bring local Twitter users to your business and will give them a reason to tweet about you with their communities.
When you give your Twitter account information, always remember to ask people to follow you. And consider the possibility of giving them an incentive.
Your turn: Do you have a local business success story to share? Have you done something smart with your Twitter community, or have you seen a business in your community reach out through Twitter? Share your stories here!
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Comments 2
Great post Charlene. I have been researching this topic a bit and your post offered great ideas for reaching local tweeple in a nice succinct post. Well done. I might also add that there is an AIR app called Tweet Local that will simply provide a feed of local tweets, a user needs to follow them manually though. Also, some folks have tagged their account with their their location on http://www.wefollow.com. Thankfully, we follow makes it easier to follow those tweeple one finds. However, location tags on the site seem to be restricted to those in large urban areas. Thanks again for a great post.
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 11:44 am ¶Stephen: Thanks for including new information in your comment. I love when suggestions aggregate! It means less search time for people, more options, and hopefully better answers.
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 11:57 am ¶Post a Comment