We can all find others with similar interests as ourselves. We just need to ask the right questions. The problem comes in finding where others gather and then to find the ones actually listening.
I have been hearing a lot of buzz lately about the benefits of Twitter, a new technology for sharing short(140 characters or less)comments(tweets). Twitter is growing exponentially. For example, in the last seven days there have been close to 2 million tweets posted to the Twitter cloud. These tweets express the momentary interests of the twitters tweeting. Some are silly. Some of them are expressions of frustration or requests for assistance. Many are short reviews of products and services including short URL links to blogs or company websites.
By using advanced twitter search criteria, you can filter these tweets to display only those that contain words related to your particular interest. This is exactly what a lot of companies are doing. They use specific search keywords to effectively listen for specific tweets that include their company name or products. Then they respond directly to these tweeters with an introduction to begin a new client relationship and offer assistance.
This very thing just happened to me today when I posted that I had sent out an email newsletter using Constant Contact. Within 3 minutes I had received a reply to my tweet from none other than Constant Contact informing me that they noticed I was using their product and offering me any assistance I may need via Twitter. How cool is that?
Since discovering this new paradigm for relationship building around a common interest, I have been creating twitter feeds based on what I do in the OMR and web survey business and adding these feeds to my Google reader so I can easily follow anyone who tweets based on keywords that apply to our business. When I see relevant posts, I can respond by offering our company's assistance in areas of form design, or printing, etc.
If you happen to be on Twitter and have any related interest in web and OMR form design, printing, scanning and reporting, please follow me. My Twitter username is bubblepeeps. I will follow you back. It would be beneficial for us to form a flock around the topic of OMR Scantron type forms and processes. I will be looking forward to seeing you on Twitter soon!
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