Looking for Mr. Customer

Ever been to a conference where 95% of the attendees are vendors?

People ask me why I do not Twitter and one of my major reasons - other than I could not do it justice with my travel schedule - is IT buyers are not on Twitter. If they did not read this blog, I would not blog either. Call them backward, socially inept, whatever - they are not on Twitter.

So someone sends me a link to this site which shows several big companies are Twittering - Kodak, Marriott, Pepsi among others.

So, I check with IT folks at a couple of large companies. Nope, not them. It's their marketing folks who are Twittering.

They are chasing after those 5% that are their customers.

Comments

Vinnie -

Since part of my business involves segmenting customers, I look at things like "What does this group of prospects share?". When I applied that to my blog, I noticed some interesting differences. Tech execs read blog posts but generally only read those that their Marketing group has found for them. Their reading is reactive - no real RSS feeds for them. Junior IT people read a lot of blogs, some religiously. But, when you get outside IT, things change a lot. Accountants, for example, don't have a lot of blog readers at all while a fair number of lawyers are big readers. My guess is that they are looking for insights for new litigation.

Twitter takes it to another level. Twitter appeals more to the self-employed, the young and the folks who really think it's important to develop a minute by minute following of their lives, opinions, etc.

I'm still not on Twitter and mostly because for the reason you state: I'm not sure my clients use it or would react to it.

[George Athannassov]

Thanks for these thoughts Vinnie. I completely agree with you. I am actually writing a post about twitter myself and I am happy to see your opinion here.

The title of your article is spot on and is really the most important part of all that - where and how to look for Mr. Customer. Thank you for your inspiring work.

[Andrew McCarthy]

For certain, Twitter isn't a place to connect with customers...yet. That said, it is a great place to keep in touch with a growing group of folks in the enterprise tech space. The number of times I've run into valuable blogs or opportunities through Twitter is growing... And I do wonder if sometime soon it will be a good place to distribute a small news update...

[Adrianne Machina]

Looking for Mr. Customer is only one of the reasons you might choose to use a micro-blogging tool like Twitter.

Twitter is like a coffee shop where you decide who is in the room with you. You can connect with virtually anyone - from programmers to journalists to celebrities. You decide who you want to hang out with when you pick your friends. You can use Twitter:

- to promote your blog
- to connect with journalists who cover your industry
- to connect with friends who might refer you business
- to connect with the business leaders who drive IT decisions
- to learn from tech gurus who are in the trenches of product development
- to get tough tech issues solved
- to find new employees
- to connect with customers
- to continue the conversation with people you've met at conferences and meetings
- oh, and the list goes on...

I would counter your argument with the fact that many IT Decisions are actually made outside of the IT Department. Many IT decisions are driven by a business leader who wants to do SOMETHING faster, better, bigger, cheaper or more securely -- the IT purchase is just the means to an end.

If your IT purchase is driven by a business decision maker or strongly influenced by one, Twitter could be an option for you. BUT you're right in that if you are looking for the CIO or CFO -- he probably isn't there. You need to start by knowing who your ideal client is and where he is.

I'm not trying to talk you into Twittering. It's certainly not a short-term strategy for finding Mr. Customer...and especially not if you're looking for the head-hancho CIO/CFO, but there are benefits you perhaps haven't thought about, like those mentioned above. (or perhaps you have, but you achieve your results a different way)

It's ironic that the IT sector was actually the first to use social media - but that was in the olden days when it was called a BBS or a Forum. They used their network of contacts to get find the answers to tricky programming problems.

The marketing world is just finally catching up.

[vinnie mirchandani]

Andrew, thanks...hence my comparison to conferences with a heavy vendor to user proportion. Not saying those are not fun or not good places to network but not a place where prospects or customers hang out.

Adrianne, been looking for payback for what seems like a lot of cycles that Twitter demands. Many of my fellow Enterprise Irregulars have hounded me for a year to start Twittering. But when I look at my blog reader stats and my corporate consulting clients, I do not see a common cross-section. Yet. May be it will change.