Opportunity Prospecting with IFTTT, Twitter & Google Docs [actionable]

Any business owner, marketing manager, sales person or business developer will know how important it is to find new business opportunities on a regular basis. In the wonderful world of digital marketing, there are so many avenues that sometimes we find ourselves with choice paralysis and in turn, procrastination. I've always tried my best to avoid looking at multiple marketing channels and getting stuck on which one to use. Instead, I select one, invest time in it and track absolutely everything for a period of time. Following this, with the data at hand, it's possible to determine whether the marketing channel was a success or not. If it was a success, let's exploit it, if it wasn't, let's pick the next one on the list. At least, that's how I believe it should work and has worked for me.   Sometimes the issue isn't selecting one but rather how to execute on the one selected. It's fairly easy to pick a channel and say let's go for it, but perhaps we don't know how to work within a channel and that's when I look at various strategies that might apply to the channel in question. I've been in digital marketing spanning back over two decades and therefore my experience assists me in this regard, but not everyone has the experience and there isn't time to wait. That's why I write guides like this, to speed things up for you and get you going. There are a number of channels that come to mind such as newsletters, Facebook, Twitter and so the list goes on. But there's a glaring problem, all of them require an audience being in place and you might not be there yet. We need to think outside of the box and come up with a strategy that doesn't require you to first build a following and that's where today's thought process and strategy comes from. Grab a coffee, let's go through this slowly:

Teaser

Today I'm going to show you how to automate an entire prospecting process using Twitter. The software is free, there aren't too many steps and the end result will be a Google Sheet jam-packed with opportunities after a few days. Well, it depends on your line of business but it's certainly possible to get a lot of prospects within a few days. Let's say you're working on branding and getting your name out there. The spreadsheet below shows 5 opportunities that you can find in the space of just a couple of hours:

Software Requirements

There are three resources you'll need in order to follow this tutorial:

1. IFTTT
2. Twitter
3. Google Sheets

IFTTT IF This Then That is a software solution that allows you to set up automated procedures based on an action. In other words, when one thing happens, we can tell the software to do something else. For example, IF it's going to rain tomorrow THEN send me an email. We define one action that is triggered by another, thus creating automation. IFTTT integrates with many systems which gives you some incredible power. Head on over to IFTTT.com and create yourself an account quickly. Twitter You won't actually need a Twitter account for this strategy as we'll simply be searching Twitter for specific tweets but it's a nice idea to have an account in case you want to engage with someone who says something that fits your criteria. You won't have to give access to your Twitter account or anything like that. Google Sheets You will need a Google account (create one now) for this and once you have one you'll need to create a Sheet via Google Docs. Go ahead and create a sheet, give it a name and save it.

The Setup

Right, at this point you should have a Google Account as well as an account with IFTTT.

Step 1 - The "IF"

Head on over to IFTTT, click on "My Applets", followed by clicking on the black button that says, "New Applet" on the right. You'll see something similar to this: Click on the "+this", search for Twitter and click on the Twitter icon, you'll see a number of different options. What we want to do is set up a trigger that happens when we search Twitter. So, look for the "New tweet from search" option and give that a click. Now we'll be looking at this: This is where things get more interesting. What we're doing here is setting up a trigger or action every time a tweet appears with specific wording. So, for example, let's say we're looking for an interview opportunity - You may enter "looking to interview" into the field and then every time someone publishes a tweet including the words, "looking to interview", we can get IFTTT to do something for us. Go ahead and type "looking to interview" or whatever you're interested in, into the text field and click the "Create trigger" button. Next, you'll see this:

Step 2 - The "THAT"

We're finished with step 1, the "IF" part of the equation. Now it's time to tackle the "That" part, which you do by clicking on the "+that" (see image above). Once again, we're presented with the selection process, this time, search for "sheet": Give the "Google Sheets" a click and let's get ready to set up the final step: Select the "Add row to spreadsheet" option because what we're going to do here is add the tweet that we found in step 1 to a Google Sheet so that we can keep track of all the interview opportunities. In other words, we've said to IFTTT that it must search Twitter looking for tweets that include, "looking to interview" and when it finds them, it must add them to a Google Sheet. Once you've clicked the "Add row to spreadsheet", you'll arrive here: At this point we need to enter in the various options:

• Spreadsheet name: This is the name of the spreadsheet you created.
• Formatted row: This is what you want to be taken from the tweet and added to your Sheet. You can keep what IFTTT pre-populates into the textarea and change it later if required.
• Drive folder path: This is where your Sheet exists in your Google Drive. If this is the first time you're doing this, chances are your path will be IFTTT/Twitter - "IFTTT" being the folder and "Twitter" being the name of your Google Sheet, change as you please.

Once you've done this, IFTTT will ask you to confirm, go ahead and do so: You're done! Each time someone publishes a tweet that includes, "looking to interview", your Google Sheet will be automatically amended with the tweet. This means that you can schedule some time to look through the Google Sheet from time to time to see if there is an opportunity for you. Here's an example of a Sheet:

Practical Examples

I've used this for a number of different applications, here are some of the examples of things I track:

• "looking to interview" - As we've done in this example, this lets me find interview opportunities.
• "looking for an app" - This provides me with a sheet with lots of tweets about apps that people are looking for. A great opportunity to stumble across an idea of an app to build.
• "looking for a website" - Similar to the "looking for an app" example.
• "looking to hire" - You could use this for job prospecting.
• "how to" - You'll receive a lot of information for this but it's a great way to either get inspired to generate some content and/or to share a piece of content you've written.

The possibilities are rather endless. You'll have to make a decision as to how you'll reach out to the person, you could tweet them back, you could look at whether they have a website and then email them. I can recommend trying different approaches here to see what works best in your line of work. For the SEO fans, we often set up triggers for certain keywords or phrases to gauge how often people are looking for them. This is a fantastic way of getting some additional information on keyword potential which may then be added to your content audit process (guide) or combined with your keyword scraping (guide).

Conclusion

Being noticed on the Internet is becoming increasingly difficult with how many producers there are and how much information is available out there. Using this strategy not only assists you in cutting out the clutter or automating the process but it also assists you in fine-tuning what you're looking for and moving you far closer to a great opportunity. Now you have the know-how of this opportunity prospecting method under your belt and you can network like a boss, regardless of the size of your following. Let us know if you make use of this strategy, we'd love to hear how you made use of it!