B2B Marketing Features

Tom Chapman, Headstream

Twitter is the perfect example of social media – an online tool powering conversation. B2B marketers have the potential to use it more effectively than B2C, not only due to the length of sales cycle but more importantly the long relationship cycle.

As a business marketer, you need to find out if your customers are talking about your brand, products, services and indeed competitors on Twitter. If they are, then you need to engage with them and be there before the sale. If not, then register your brand's ID on Twitter and get involved before your competitors do.

With any communications tool, you should have a strategy in place to effectively handle the relationships with customers. Here are guidelines on how to best communicate your brand on Twitter.

1. Register your brand

Don't get brand jacked – register your company name on Twitter! You can then link this account to your company blog so you are integrating your communications and syndicating content.

If your organisation does not have a blog, consider using Twitter – it can be cross-platform integrated, easier to maintain and your customers can see what you are up to.

Your sales and marketing team should also look to register their personal Twitter accounts. Dell employees use their personal name and company Twitter ID (e.g. JohnatDell) to reinforce transparency.

2. Find your customers

Using the Twitter search tool you can find users who mention your brand, product, service, industry or competitor, and then follow them.

They hopefully will check out your website or read your 'tweets' and follow you back. Even if they do not follow you back immediately, you can earn their following by answering any related questions adding value with an '@reply'.

Do not fall into the trap of using 'auto-follow' tools or following everyone who follows you, keep focussed on your strategy and your audience.

3. Set your brand apart from the noise

Thinking of what you should 'tweet' about? Twitter gives you 140 characters to answer the question 'what are you doing now?' so make it relevant and remember that anything you tweet will be indexed by Google.

Give some thought to your tone of voice. I would recommend that your tweets are conversational.

As with any social tool it is your contribution to the community that will set you apart from the noise and encourage followers to engage with your brand. Offering social currency such as links to industry white papers, reports, case studies, hints and tips may earn your brand social endorsement in the form of a 'retweet', a powerful feature of Twitter of online word-of-mouth marketing in action.

Twitter is a business ecosystem bringing together people, conversations, offerings and entire industries into one busy marketplace where the savvy can extract value and form long-term relationships.

B2B marketers should look toward Twitter as a cost-effective way of getting closer to customers. The question you should be asking yourself today is 'should I be looking to extract value from social media tools such as Twitter now, or play catch up, spending more time and effort later on?'

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