Picture this scenario.

A potential customer (let’s call her Sandra) is on Twitter asking for recommendations for a product or service. One of her friends (Bob) suggests your company, and you see the tweet via TweetDeck or Hootsuite.

You have a few options at this point, so what do you do?

a) Retweet Bob’s recommendation of your company.
b) Reply to Bob’s tweet, thanking him for the recommendation.
c) Tweet Sandra and ask her if you can help with anything.
d) A combination of the above.
e) Think ‘That was nice of Bob. Sandra has the details she needs, she knows how to get in touch if she wants,’ and get on with your day.

There is no right answer here. It will depend on your company, your general approach and ideals, and a whole host of other factors. The absolute golden rule for social media is to test everything yourself. Only you know what works for your industry and your business.

Having said that, here’s what I found…

a) It’s best to avoid this option. Nine times out of ten, a retweet signals the end of a conversation with that person. Yes, your other followers will see the recommendation, but – assuming that they are mostly customers – they already like you and buy from you. They know you’re good. (If they don’t, then you will just be antagonising them by tweeting that kind of stuff anyway). A retweet on its own says ‘I agree with this statement but I don’t have the characters/time/energy to take this any further’.

b) This is usually a good option, especially combined with c). Most of the time, if your response is genuine and human, Bob will follow up by replying to you along the lines of: ‘You’re welcome! You do a great job/I love your product/you’re so much better than Competitor X’. A personal recommendation is strong on its own, but what makes it even stronger is a specific reason why you’re good. You need that second part to it. At this point you could retweet if you like, and create a sense of familiarity with Sandra, who at the point will probably be checking out your tweets (she’ll hopefully be thinking, ‘Hey, this company seems to get on pretty well with Bob and they are so on the ball with social media!’).

c) Another good option. But. Don’t be tempted to ignore Bob altogether to pursue Sandra. She’ll think it’s kind of creepy if you suddenly start stalking her. And hell, you wouldn’t even know about her without Bob’s recommendation. The best option is to take one tweet to thank Bob as per option b) above whilst including Sandra on the tweet and asking if you can help with anything. That way she knows why you’ve suddenly started talking to her. Don’t follow her at this stage or she’ll think you’re pushy. Or creepy. Or both. Let Bob do the recommending – his opinion means more, and he’s good at it.

e) This may work in your favour if Sandra has several recommendations from other friends for other companies who are now busy tweeting her (or stalking her). You’ll seem less pushy. The danger is that you’ll also come across like you don’t care, or you aren’t active on social media. Most of the time people are reluctant to start a conversation with a company when they’re looking to buy something from them for the first time or they’re still testing the waters, so the best option is usually to drop them a friendly tweet to let them know you’re there and you’re happy to answer any questions. It’s not too pushy, but it also sends a clear ‘We have time for you’ message.

(Side note: Avoid coming in before the recommendation stage. If you’re tracking generic products and services in your Twitter client, and someone asks for recommendations for ‘Generic Service Z’, don’t tweet them unless you’re a small company and confident with what you’re doing. It’s too easy to be labelled desperate, a spammer, or both).

So. You’ve picked option d), Bob’s happy, Sandra’s happy, you’re happy. And everyone lived happily ever after.

Well, not quite. It’s time to move on to stage 2.

Stage 2 is where the art of coincidence comes in. If the first part has gone well, Sandra is probably following you on Twitter at this point (we’re working under the assumption that even if she’s not, she’s probably going to manually check your tweets again at some point in the near future anyway). By this point, Sandra may have thanked you, asked you a couple of questions specifically about Product Y, or maybe she’s been chatting to Bob or her other friends on Twitter about Product Y. But she hasn’t bought anything yet (tip: her tweets show she’s probably still asking for recommendations, or that she’s still talking to people about it, or she’s gone quiet, or generally hasn’t mentioned buying it).

So, leaving it at least a few hours (and making sure you have at least a few other random tweets in between), you want to tweet something about your very own Product Y and how it’s so awesome! It’s much better than anyone else’s Product Y because of Fantastic Reason 1, Outstanding Reason 2, and Unbelievable Reason 3.

And if you’re looking for bonus points here…

Guess what? There’s actually a brand new very special limited time offer on Product Y! Yep, right now!

Sandra right now is thinking, ‘Wow, I was just looking to buy Product Y and now this fantastic company that Bob uses has a limited time offer on! What a coincidence!’. Because it’s a limited time offer, she’s making that buying decision now. She doesn’t want to miss out. You’ve made the sale. Sandra is happy with her ‘concidental’ discount. Everyone wins.

And THEN they all lived happily ever after.

Ok, so this was a really long and drawn out scenario to explain a very simple concept. But the idea is that you can create your own ‘coincidences’ when it comes to social media in a lot of different ways. Things will always happen by accident, because people are random and situations are random, especially when it comes to social media. But you can almost always take control of a situation to ensure the outcome is in your favour – and even though it may seem obvious to you, it’s actually extremely subtle in practice, especially with bigger companies. The larger you are, the more people assume (often mistakenly) that you don’t have time for them, or you don’t remember them.

As you create situations and strategies, you’ll get more confident. You’ll know what works every single time and what only works some of the time and what probably shouldn’t be tried again. And don’t forget that even creating identical situations can lead to different outcomes with different people, so don’t be afraid to repeat experiments (contrary to Einstein’s Theory of Insanity). Social media is about a lot more than simply tweeting a bit of content and ticking it off as ‘job done’.