‘Fresh off FaffCon6, I’m on the move to start some prospecting…something Faffer Staffer Lauren McCullough hammered home in a session she initiated.
No, I don’t do enough prospecting for leads/clients. None of us probably do enough.
But I was struck by an article I read in the Wall Street Journal on the plane back from San Antonio that related directly to this.
As you know, Twitter is preparing for its first IPO, so lots of previously unknown information about the company is now public. Most big companies that prepare to go public reveal how much they’ve made from selling ads, or even licensing their product to 3rd-party companies.
The shocker was how much Twitter was making (billions?) all these years, selling access to the deep vein of public comments and information its subscribers provide for free. That’s right. Twitter is making a bundle by enabling data mining.
According to the article in the WSJ: “…in 2012, the company made $47.5 million by licensing its vast stream of real-time opinions and sentiments to companies that analyze it for insights into news events and trends…”
Read the full articles here:
What Can Business Do With Twitter Data?
Twitter’s Data Business Proves Lucrative
In case you can’t see the whole article, here’s another salient exerpt: “…brands, non-profit organizations, politicians, and Wall Street traders are using Twitter not only to gauge opinions or to manage PR cruises, but also as a form of market research that’s starting to impact business decisions…”
As individual freelancers, we obviously do not have the mechanisms that some of these big companies do to run massive data-crunching analyses… but that doesn’t mean there aren’t effective methods.
Please read again my blog: “Still Don’t Get Twitter?”, which lays out a simple formula anyone can do to prospect for decent Voice Over leads on Twitter. Don’t get time-sucked in to the silly stream of consciousness…MINE this data for what it is: a mountain of data with rich veins of VO opportunities.
Sorry, I’d write more, but I’m off to get my digital pick and shovel!
CourVO
