8/06/2011

How to Import Your Customer Database into Google+ & Twitter

One thing I get asked frequently by clients is:  how can we keep in touch with our customers on Twitter?
The answer is actually very easy, but judging by the reactions when I’ve explained this, it isn’t something which many people are doing at the moment. So I thought I’d list the process I’d recommend following in order to import your clients/customers into social media sites such as Twitter and Google+.
1) Export your customer database to CSV - you can do this with social media connections too – for example, exporting LinkedIn connections – or in the case of this example, exporting email blog subscribers from Feedburner:
FeedBurner emails
2) Trim down CSV & add Firstname & Lastname – so that your spreadsheet looks like this one – just use fake names, as we don’t need these:
Customer CSV
3) Import email as contacts into a Gmail account – I’d recommend setting up a contact group for this to make it easier to manage.
Gmail Import
4) Find friends via Gmail – Google+ will automatically suggest contacts from your Gmail account and Twitter allows you to import contacts via Gmail:
Gmail Import
I’d recommend just selecting the users who are already using the site; you don’t want to annoy everyone with invitations and obviously you need to have a good social media strategy in place (but that’s for another post!). Don’t just follow them from an inactive account and expect to see great results.
So it’s as easy as that! I’d be interested in hearing in the comments how you connect with your customers using social media?

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