The last few weeks we’ve been testing a strategy here at GBW.
One way to get new traffic, new followers and even new customers is to mention others.
The goal is to obviously be nice to others, but also to tap into the audiences that brands and influencers have.
When you’re new out there in the online world or if you haven’t built up an audience for yourself just yet you need to go where the people are. It’s like the new musical act that goes out on tour with the established artist. It’s a chance for the new person to get in front of an established audience to win over new fans.
So we’ve written and shared posts that have included brands. Here is an example of what can happen when you do this:
@DayneShuda @aweber @freshbooks @bufferapp @usertesting Awesome list Dayne! Thanks for including us! :) -Mary
— Buffer (@buffer) December 20, 2013
Buffer also retweeted our original tweet.
This has happened with other individuals and brands.
But here’s the point of the post…
When I started doing this I first thought that it wouldn’t be worthwhile to try it with big brands. After all, why would a billion dollar company even care if a small time blogging company wrote about them and tweeted them?
But here’s the secret – behind these billion dollar brand social accounts are people.
These are folks just like you or me. They work hard all day. They’re busy. They’re doing what they can to make their company successful and when you say something nice about them they take notice.
I worked on some social media initiatives for a large ecommerce company. I was the guy that paid attention to the Mentions column on Twitter. I would notice when someone said something about the brand.
I’m just a guy.
The people that handle social media for these brands are great people. They’re talented, but don’t think that they’re unreachable. You can say something nice about them (without spamming them all the time) and get their attention.
Focus on win-win situations where you’re saying something nice about the brand and maybe they’ll retweet your post or send you some traffic.
That’s the only way this can work and don’t go overboard with reaching out to them. That’ll be considered as spam.
Focus on the win-win and get over the fear that big brands won’t listen to you because I’ve learned that they will listen as long as you’re being respective and appreciate of the work they do.