FROM social media search TO spam

I’ve been giving some thought to the potential for social media services to be used for lead generation...  IE.  If someone tweets “looking forward to buying a new laptop tomorrow” is it possible, desirable and actionable to take this snippet of conversation and turn it into a sales lead?

Is It Possible?  The answer is unequivocally “Yes”.   I’m running trials with a number of free social media services where I’ve created automated searches for specific key phrases in conversations.

Using Twitter’s advanced search service is a good place to start:  http://search.twitter.com/advanced   Not only can you search by key phrase but also by location and attitude.  So I can search on “buying a new laptop tomorrow” and add “Manchester” and “ - apple”.... Requesting results as an RSS feed turns this into an automated search which are picked up directly by my mobile Google Reader app, thereby providing me with instant notification...

Using Google Alerts also gives me the opportunity to set up an automated social media search across many other social platforms, blogs and forums with the added functionality of emailing results.

Hootsuite is a great social service, enabling me to monitor multiple searches and mentions on multiple social channels.  I like using their service a lot and together with their #android app provides me with my every day social media engagement tools.

However. Yahoo Pipes was a revelation, enabling multiple searches to be aggregated into a single report.  I then setup an automated response to the searches which I initially thought was very cool....  Using my example, I set up an automated response as follows: “Hi. Noticed you’re thinking of buying a new laptop tomorrow in Manchester. Visit Joe’s Laptops and get a 10% discount with this voucher:  http://bit.ly/link_included_here”

But Is This Desirable?  To answer this question objectively depends upon your point of view!  

My view is that social media conversations are “personal” and need to be respected as such.  ie. If two friends were having a chat in a pub and shared a conversation about “which laptop to buy tomorrow”, how would they feel if an unknown third party interrupted their conversation to say “If you go down to Joe’s Laptops tomorrow he’ll give you a 10% discount...”  I would suggest their response would be a polite “Butt out:  Our conversation has nothing to do with you”...  

But less scrupulous people are going to setup automated responses and interrupt personal conversations with commercial messages.  In my view this is social media spam.

Uninvited conversations and interrupted conversations need to be conducted with as much tact and caution as if the conversation was happening in person; which is going to be very difficult when all the non-verbal communication signals are not available to the digital conversation maker.

So Is It actionable to use social media as a lead generation service?  Within the scope of this blog article I have concluded the answer is “No”.  

Social media tools are great for “listening” to the conversations that are relevant and of interest to you, but to directly and automatically respond with a commercial message can easily cause offence.  It’s intrusive and spammy and will easily have the opposite effect of the one desired.  Eg:  the interrupted party could tweet to all his followers:  “If you have any sense don't go any where near Joe’s Laptops.  They are sharks!”

What many of us don’t realise is that the conversations we have on Twitter, Facebook and other social sites are “public” and not at all “private”! Social media tools exist that can listen in on all these conversations, but great care and judgement needs to be exercised in deciding how we want to respond and engage with the conversations which are of interest to us.