How 20 Minutes on Twitter Started a Profitable Client Relationship
My "strategy" (if you can call it that) with Twitter is to simply share whatever is on my mind - if I think it might be of interest to the people I'm engaging with. This could be as work-specific as HTML5 infographics or articles about social innovation, or it could be as completely random as Lady Gaga's meat costume at the VMAs. (No, really. Meat.)
Since I do focus my tweets so specifically on whatever is on my mind at the moment, very often this ends up meaning that I'm tweeting about food - what I'm cooking, what I'm eating, what I'm doing with my farm share. While this is one of the most common complaints about Twitter ("who wants to hear about the sandwich you ate for lunch?"), it's also what landed me a long-term and very profitable relationship with one of my favorite clients. Here's how it went down.
Sometime in 2008, when I started focusing the zen kitchen's work on the specialty food industry, I noticed that a company named TankaBar had started following me. I didn't pay it much mind at the time. About 3-4 months later, I was having a conversation with some fellow designers about ways to get in front of potential clients, and posed the following on Twitter: "Some designers say that critiquing a prospect's work is an effective way to reach them. I say it's rude and risks offense. What say you?"
Within a few minutes, TankaBar had responded via @reply confirming that they got that quite often and couldn't stand it. Out of curiosity, I replied, "well then, as a prospect, how do you like to be approached?"
The response? "Well, we need to redesign our website. Want to send us a pitch?"
Continued on the next page
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