DogBytes Blog

3 Keys to B2B Company Success WIth Twitter

  

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For the past several years, client after client has told FuelDog that their business is different, that in their industry, nobody is using Twitter, and anyway "I don't have time for that".  Here's what those clients need to know...first, you're wrong, second, you're thinking about Twitter incorrectly, and third, you do have time because it literally takes one minute to create a valuable tweet.  You may not have time to blog, but you do have time to Tweet.

With this said, we are not suggesting that you invest time and energy in Twitter for your health.  You are doing this to create business value.  In the case of Twitter, this means attention and leads. Here are the 3 keys to B2B success with Twitter.

Provide Valuable, On-Topic B2B Content to a Focused Audience

Twitter is not all about you and your company.  Don't think of it as a way to talk about your organization non-stop.  Think of it as a way to present your expertise, your understanding of the industry you serve, your perspective and your thought leadership to an audience comprised of potential customers.  Steps to make this happen:

• Define your target audience - who are they, what types of problems do they face
• Define your editorial focus - how can you provide value to your audience, not just sales pitches. Start with the thought that you want to solve their problems and answer their questions...even if they don't know they have them yet
• Follow your industry daily - set up Google Alerts, RSS feeds from industry publications, follow leading bloggers.  This will give you all the ammunition you need to come up with a nugget or two of insight a day for your audience. 
• Tweet at least once a day.  Only one out of every 5 tweets should be about your company, or your followers will stop paying attention to you....actually, they will probably never follow you to begin with.

By executing on the above for a few weeks, you can then:

Build a Large Following of the Right People

The way that you build a following in Twitter is by following other people.  On Twitter, when you follow someone, about 30% of the time they will follow you back.  In order to build the correct type of audience, find the experts that are already tweeting about your "topic" and start following their followers. 

For example, if you are interested in an audience of CIO's, you may want to find CIO Magazine (@CIOMagazine - they currently have 4,231 followers) and follow their followers.  Ditto for well known bloggers in the space.  Ditto for your competitors.

There are a number of different software products in the market that will help  you build your audience automatically (it is a real pain to click on 500 names a day manually).  Be sure to unfollow people that haven't followed you back within 3 days.  The reason for this is that Twitter has break points.  For example, you can't follow more than 2,000 people until you have 2,000 followers yourself. 

This may seem a little bit mercenary, but the goal is to build an audience of the right people quickly.  You will do that by providing valuable content and following the right people.

Once you've executed on the first two steps, you are positioned to "Move the Needle"

Drive Attention and Leads to Your Company

Now that you have a focused audience paying attention to you on Twitter, start to make Twitter an important part of your marketing mix.

• If you have a company blog, Tweet every time there is a new post (try several times in slightly different ways).  You will drive incremental traffic.
• If you have a case study, white paper, webinar that you are promoting - and trying to get people to register for - Tweet about it (several times in slightly different ways).  This will drive additional leads into your sales pipeline.  If one sale comes out of this, you've likely paid for your investment.
• Speaking at a conference?  Exhibiting at an event?  Interviewed for a magazine?  Get it up there.
• Press releases?  Get them on Twitter....as long as you are adding value to your followers in different ways, promote yourself.  Just don't solely promote yourself.
• Use http://bit.ly as your URL shortener...they have the best analytics so you can see how your Tweets are pulling.

Twitter is not all about kids blabbing on and on about what they had for dinner or where they are meeting their friends.  Business people are using this as an important channel for gathering information and as an easy way to promote their expertise.  Follow the 3 easy steps.

1.  Provide Valuable, Focused Content
2.  Build a Large Following of the Right People
3.  Use Twitter to "Move the Needle" and Generate Attention and Leads