Over the weekend I was chatting to a local business, they knew I worked in marketing and they came out with the following line
“We’re on twitter and we have a few hundred followers, but half of them are just local businesses – they’re not customers”
There is so much wrong with that statement it’s untrue!!!
I de-constructed the sentence for about 2 seconds in exasperation and said “But local businesses are your local customers as well – don’t you get this!”
The business didn’t see the link between the local businesses and local residents and couldn’t see that these hundreds of local businesses
- Live local and shop local, eat local, drink local
- Celebrate their birthdays, anniversaries and success locally
- Take their kids to the local school and meet dozens of like minded local people
- Network at local business networking meetings and meet other local businesses who live locally
- Oh and the majority of their customers are local as well
The problem when you view social media cynically is you miss out on all of it’s benefits – you can’t just view followers as cash cows!
A local business could be your best local customers and by cynically putting them to be in a box of customers / non-customer you’ve just lost of any chance of building something great
I’ve got nearly 6000 twitter followers following me …. I don’t view them in categories of businesses or residents
I’m just grateful that 11,000 PEOPLE have chosen to listen to what I say and for that reason I treat them all equally!
