Many B2B businesses have a Twitter account these days, but simply being on Twitter is not enough. If you or your employees are going to spend time using social media networks, there have to be objectives and it has to work for your business.
It’s fine if you want to use Twitter as a news publication feed – but there’s so much more you can do with it as a B2B communication tool. Why not use Twitter as part of your new business strategy? If it’s not going to help your business grow and develop, then you’re really wasting time. Get your new business development team involved with planning your Twitter profile. You can also find out their tactics and make sure social media is integrated and woven in to really work together.
Twitter works best when there’s some level of personalization and chat. As well as a news feed, Twitter acts as an introduction service essentially, as it is so easy to connect with people. There’s an old adage that says products don’t sell, people sell. So use Twitter for the communication tool that it is.
Here’s five tips on how to be more effective on Twitter and in turn increase the number (and temperature) of leads.
1. Give your organization a face: Let people know who they’re talking to instead of a faceless organization. Having a corporate account is important, but it’s very hard to hold a conversation with someone if you don’t know who you’re talking to. Add the personal Twitter handles of those who are talking into your bio, so people know who you are, and can also follow your personal accounts.
2. Share content to drive people to your website: A varied content schedule should incorporate a mix of updates, interesting articles as well as company news. However, make sure you create and post content which gives people the opportunity to visit your website or specific landing pages.
This can be via blog and news posts, new sections or products which have launched or anything else of interest to your customers.
3. Mention people you have met: People like being mentioned on Twitter – it starts conversations and you get to know people and they get to know you. If you’ve been to a networking event, conference or meeting, give the event and anyone you’ve met a shout out and cement the contacts you’ve made.
This reminds people who you are, gives them your contact details and can often lead to further communication and a meeting.
4. Use Twitter to create warm leads: Your new business development manager could sit down and plow through a lot of cold calls with relevant businesses but this is really a shot in the dark. However, if you start connecting with other businesses and other business people through Twitter, this is a friendly way to introduce your company and start to form a relationship.
Start to follow any people or businesses you think have new business potential. You could mention a blog post they’ve written or comment on some of their business news – anything that opens a conversation. They key is to start that conversation, not start a sale.
5. Assess your progress regularly: It sounds simple, but this is something many companies forget to do. You need to decide on some objectives and metrics to measure these objectives. These might be to increase relevant followers by so many every quarter, to set up a certain number of business meetings and achieve a certain number of click-through hits to your website.
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.This article was originally posted to the Social Media B2B Blog by Carolyn Huges on September 23, 2013.
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