Everyone is abuzz (atweet?) with talk of the best way to use social media, whether it be to promote your brand, promote yourself or engage your customers. For today’s B2B marketer, there are a many ways to benefit from social media interaction and the information it provides. One site that provides an immediate business value is Twitter, where users provide short messages and status updates to their network. A feature that distinguishes Twitter from many other social networks is that most users allow their updates to be publicly viewed, unlike networks such as Facebook that revolve around a more exclusive social group.
Using Twitter for Marketing
Twitter can be a useful venue for promoting your brand, especially through the use creative or value-added techniques such as contests, discounts or free content like a webinar or ebook. It is also a great way to share your recent blog posts, announce exciting new features and highlight company accomplishments. Just remember not to toot your own horn too loudly without providing something of value, or you may start to lose followers.
Tracking social media interaction can be tricky, but using distinct URL structure to promote content on Twitter can help you track interactions. Marketing automation tools can help you pull in statistics from Google Analytics tracking links and tie the source to individual prospects. Some systems also provide a URL shortener that can provide in depth statistics on clicks.
Using Twitter for Sales
If the marketer is out there using Twitter to “talk” to potential customers, the sales guy should be out there listening. When you’re about to make a sales call, it can be helpful to check out a prospect’s latest Twitter updates. Sometimes this gives you valuable insight into their research process, even revealing what other competitors may be involved in the deal. In other cases it may just give you a few talking points.
Using Google Alerts or programs like Tweet Deck to track what people are saying about your competitors and key industry terms can also help you scout out new leads that you may not have otherwise discovered. This is an opportunity to engage with someone when you know they are actively looking to make a purchase.
