What My 9th Grade Self Learned about Marketing from DM-ing Girls on Twitter
It was 9th grade and I was truly in my prime (or so I thought).
Twitter had finally become the global player that it is today.
Like every other young person at the time, I took to twitter to voice my opinion on complete nonsense.
Now let me set the stage for you:
For my generation we have several tiers of friends:
Tier 1 — our actual friends
Tier 2 — the people we kinda have to be friends with
Tier 3 — people we hardly know (or have never met) but that we mutually follow on social media.
If it seems odd that’s because it is.
But anyone below the age of 27 will know exactly what it feels like to see someone they know everything about but have never actually met.
So now that I’ve queued it up, you can likely infer that a good amount of my followers and those I followed I had never met.
So I’m in Twitter, scrolling through the feed, and come across a #newpropic from a girl I had never met.
I click on her profile and see her last post before was a lyric from a Red Hot Chili Peppers song (my favorite band at the time).
So the genius in me thought:
“What if I message her about the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Then she’ll notice who I am, and maybe we go see a movie?”(Netflix & Chill didn’t exist just yet)
So I did.
3 weeks later, we went on a date.
Now this isn’t advice on how to land a date from a 9th grade version of myself, so let me explain what this means marketing wise.
1. Consumer Content is Information
After years of re-posting blogs about complete nonsense, brands today are beginning to ask:
“What do my consumers actually care about when on social media?”
Rather than spending a fortune on non-relevant research or internally debating it for months, what if we went and checked out their profiles?
By doing so, you can quickly uncover what someone really cares about.
From here, you can aggregate that data across the board to then reverse engineer a content strategy oriented at fitting what they actually care about.
For me, this was understanding that a girl enjoyed the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
2. Custom Messaging
The most underutilized tool on social platforms is messaging.
There’s a button to literally message a consumer yet we rarely do this.
No, it isn’t the most scalable marketing strategy, but it’s an incredible opportunity to have a real conversation with a consumer — something we rarely get to have.
Just as I took the time to consume information then tailor a message (about her favorite music), this drastically increased the likelihood she would respond.
If I simply messaged:
“Hi I’m Jake, I play basketball. Want to go on a date?”, it likely wouldn’t have generated a response.
By tailoring our message we show our consumer that we actually care about what she/he cares about.
3. Spark Conversation, Not Conversion
What if my message with this girl went like this:
Jake:
“Hey, saw you’re into the Red Hot Chili Peppers, rock on 🤘. #californication”
Girl:
*boring response*
Jake:
“Ok, so movies soon? Here’s a link to my calendar -> *link*”
Stupid right?
Yet brands everywhere operate under the notion that once they’ve captured attention, they can go right for the sale.
Instead, the key is to continue the conversation, sit back, and let them beg to go to the movies.
I hope high school Jake taught you a valuable marketing lesson. I know I learned quite a bit from him.
Rock on 🤘 and get sliding into those DMs!
