I make a point of transcending timezones and borders with my connections on social media, especially as a suitcase entrepreneur because I want to reach a global audience and make friends the world over.
Even though I no longer live in Vancouver I’m fortunate enough to have a great network of awesome friends and entrepreneurs who I can turn to.
So when I heard that I was missing out on Scott Stratten’s last Unbook tour stop in Vancouver, I asked the lovely Cadi Jordan of Jordan Consulting (who I met on Twitter) to pose a question to him.
Better yet I asked if she could nab him on video to ask this Suitcase Entrepreneur’s question:
How do we reach the global market with social media?
In case you have never heard of Scott Stratten, he’s only the maestro on unmarketing – his message: Stop marketing. Start engaging.
I quote him in my Social Media Bootcamp as an example of the 5 steps to success on Twitter: Follow, Reply, Retweet, Share, Repeat.
You can watch the short video or read the transcript below:
Cadi Jordan:
Our question for you today, Scott is, “How do we reach the global market?” It seems that North America is big in Twitter and every form of social media that seems to be out there. We know it’s happening in other countries. How do we reach them? How do we reach the market?
Scott Stratten:
That’s one of the good things about social media is that it’s barrierless and if you actually look at the stats, things like Facebook, a majority of people actually are outside the US.
And the problem is, we are centering on, one of the issues especially with something like Twitter is that it’s so real time, that if you want to talk to people around the world, you’ve got to be up when most people are up.
So if you want to talk to the people in the UK, you want to talk to people in Asia or Australia, you got to realize their peak times usually in Twitter are midday for them. And the problem I find is when people try to reach those audiences – I’ll give you the biggest mistake that I find people make, is automating and trying to be in front of those people when they’re not here.
So they set an auto post to promote a tweet or a blog post at like 3:00 AM here, but will be middle of the day over the other side of the world and they’re like, well, I’m reaching my market that way but you’re not because you’re not reaching the conversation with them. Because somebody will see it and reply to you and you’ll take seven hours to reply to them and by the time you reply, they’re already asleep. So it doesn’t work that way.
If you want to reach them on a real time basis, you got to be up at that time and if not, create great content that’s borderless. You watch what you say in your post. A lot of times, we reference where we are and where we’re from. Make it kind of a global type of thing and trust me, awesome gets spread around pretty quickly.
Cadi Jordan:
Thank you, Scott. Over and out. We’re going to get you ready for your panel now.
Scott Stratten:
Awesome.
“Social Media, isn’t Media at all- it is simply a conversation with two or more people. It’s an action. Not a site…It’s the ability to have conversations on line with others, whether it is your market, consumers, colleagues, or anyone who happens to come across your conversation.”
Scott’s other words of advice are to keep on engaging…it’s what Social Media is all about. No matter what time zone you are in.
3 ways to connect with more international Twitter users:
Here’s 3 of my tips that I use to connect globally.
Search on hashtags: Go to search.twitter.com and search on the city, country or location you’re wanting to find people in. For example #buenosaires will pick up people who are talking about this city or using this hashtag in their tweets.
Just by searching on that I can then start a conversation with them and find out about local events that may be happening, or I can add another hashtag like #marketing to target businesses that may need my help here.
Search on Twellow: The Yellow pages for Twitter, this great free service allows you to search by category and location and then gives you a list from the most influential people downwards all in one long results page. You can follow them directly from here to and read more about them in an extended bio so that your introduction to them can be a personal one.
Find international lists: People use lists and add people to them that they want to follow more easily – which means they’ve already done much of the work for you of finding quality people. The point is you can access these lists when they’re public too and make the most of them just by searching on Twitter lists.
If someone has put together a list of accountants in Kuala Lumpur that’s public and that’s your target market, you can follow that list and connect with the people included in it individually. Here’s more info on how to use them.
Tell me, how do you make sure you’re engaging, across borders, every day?