Smart Ways to Use Twitter for B2B Marketing

Twitter is quickly developing into a useful marketing tool for small and midsize companies that sell products and services to other businesses. It provides access to a huge pool of prospects, contacts, and potential business partners. It also can plug you into a deep source of insider information and perspectives about your industry that can improve all your marketing efforts.

Tweets, the short public messages that often link to more information, are easy to create and share. Equally important is that they are easy to read and reply to. These qualities make Twitter a handy and inexpensive way to learn about B2B prospects, by reading and responding to posts. As you read tweets, look for messages from those whose interests line up with what your business offers. That way you can tactfully offer a link to your company’s site for more information, and possibly generate a sale.

To make your B2B Twitter strategy as effective as possible, here are a few guidelines:

• Learn from the best: Some big companies have a knack for tweeting in a way that drives their business. Study what they say and how they get a rapport going with their customers. Some of the best are Levi’s, Nike, Zappos, and Chow.
• Choose carefully who you follow: When you set up your Twitter account you can follow companies, and the tweets of those companies will automatically come to you. Pick and choose carefully. When a company you’ve selected retweets interesting posts from others, it is much like a referral. Such retweets will guide you to additional companies to follow. In general, experts in B2B marketing recommend you follow customers, analysts, partners, potential customers, media, and bloggers in your industry.
• Include various departments of your business: As in any marketing effort, first make sure everyone understands your consistent brand position. Then encourage tech savvy staffers, especially those in sales, to read and respond to tweets involving your industry.
• Use apps to help manage your tweeting: You can filter and organize incoming tweets to help you stay on top of the most important messages. Hootsuite is one of the most popular tools right now; in addition, check out TweetChat and TweetDeck.
• Keep the tone personal and conversational: What you say can be positive and consistent with your brand, but how you say it needs to be distinctive. Avoid any phrases that sound like a public relations script. Think of Twitter as a conversation, not a sales pitch.
• Use links to track who is reading your tweets and retweeting: A service called bit.ly will help you shorten your links, keep track of who is clicking links in your tweets, and know which of your tweets are most popular. When you know what is popular, you’ll know what to keep doing.

It’s important to remember that first and foremost, Twitter B2B marketing means listening. The constant stream of posts on Twitter initially might seem chaotic and overwhelming. But as you are exposed to your Twitter stream, you will start to “hear” interesting nuggets of insight and information and be able to recognize the people and companies with the most to offer your company.