As B2B marketing teams crank up the socialmedia mix in their outreach to the key community groups for their company (clients, prospects, partners, industry, analysts, employees, suppliers, etc.), here are five ways to use Twitter in your B2B marketing:
Start the Conversation and Keep It Going: This is a great medium to carry on an interactive and real-time dialogue with the best sources of your company’s revenue, profits, knowledge of real-world ways to improve your service and product, etc. Your clients, prospects, partners and other key constituencies are a tremendous resource to tap for insights and ideas. You’ll need to develop a company policy that fits your culture related to who in your company can post and reply on behalf of the company. Small companies should consider diving in with each employee having a role on Twitter (perhaps segmented by type of audience group to determine who interacts with each audience). Larger companies, if you haven’t already, should dedicate a resource as at least part of their job to be the “social media czar.” If your marketing team has more than a few people, you could appoint multiple people, having a person assigned to each of your social media channels. The key point here is not to post on Twitter and then not keep it up – start the conversation and keep it going!
Real-Time Pulse of Your Community: As you have on-going conversations with members of your community, use the opportunity to ask questions. Think of this as your best way to conduct real-time surveys. Don’t have a list of a dozen questions and ask them in a row. Ask a question and let the dialogue and exchanges between users play out. When it starts to slow down, ask your next question. With the responses to your questions will come new ideas, some complaints (always, always, always follow-up!), and insights you’d never get from a traditional survey.
Nuture Your Community: Twitter gives you a golden opportunity to keep in touch with your community on a regular basis. How many companies large and small still send out quarterly newsletters or monthly e-mail updates? That would be like calling Mom and Dad once a month or a few times a year. Most of us would like to hear from our friends and family on a more frequent basis, even if it’s just to touch base. Think of your community of users, prospects, partners and others in the same way and have a meaningful piece of information to share with them via Twitter on at least a daily basis. (See #1 – Keep the conversation going!)
Grow Your Community: Twitter is a terrific way for B2B marketing teams to grow the community of a company’s users, prospects, partners and industry contacts. Twitter is the most real-time and interactive way for you to do this today. Check out this helpful article on building a community of Twitter followers for your company. http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4277/How-to-Build-a-Community-of-Twitter-Followers-for-Your-Company.aspx
Content Matters: Last but not least for today’s blog entry, don’t forget that content matters. Just because Twitter posts are a short 140 characters, it doesn’t make what you’re saying any less important. The need to maintain relevancy and interest for your audience remains the same regardless of the short format.
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