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How B2B's Can Leverage Their 140-Character Tweets

WhiteSpace

Twitter presence can be a powerful part of your business' social media marketing strategy. Used successfully, Twitter can provide tremendous results, both for brand awareness and for driving leads. However, I'm betting that most B2B marketers (and that may include you) are struggling with either how to use Twitter effectively or how to optimize their approach.

 

According to a survey conducted by Social Media Examiner , earlier this spring, the survey asked more than 3,800 marketers where they focus their social media activities, how much time they invest and what the rewards are for doing so. Although their report claims that 82% of B2B companies are using Twitter for marketing purposes, I'll bet that a vast majority of B2B's are really working to incorporate the channel into their marketing strategy.   

Adopting a proper Twitter strategy will help you realize the hidden benefits of using such a platform for your business. So, if you're looking to move beyond the occasional tweet, and are ready to take full advantage of Twitter as a marketing tool, here are some helpful tips to get you started.

1) Create great content and share it
Any inbound marketer today will endorse the fact that 'content is still king'. In fact content marketing is at the core of most B2B marketing programs. Marketers with the most successful sites specifically design content to draw buyers into the sales cycle. For many business-to-business sales, the cycle may involve many steps and multiple buyer personas, and may take months or even years to complete. That means that prospects must be nurtured over time through the decison cycle. To nurture leads, you will often create a series of relevant content pieces, such as blogs, whitepapers and webinars.

Twitter provides a great way to distribute that content, such as your blogs and other articles, links, and short comments that appeal to the interest of your target audience. And why not take advantage of that tweet, linking it back to a landing page to download or receive an offer. If the content on your site is truly remarkable, people may start tweeting about it on their own and sharing your resouces to their followers on Twitter. And, that's how you grow!

2) Monitor activity
Monitor your brand on Twitter. Either go to the Connect tab on your Twitter navigation, sign up for email updates, or use a software  like what HubSpot offers to help you monitor all activity. If you find someone tweeting about your products or a person who is looking for a solution that your product provides, let him or her know!

3) Use Favorites to your advantage
Use the Twitter "Favorites" feature as a list of company testimonials. When you hover your mouse over an individual tweet in your Twitter stream, a few options appear, including the option to "Favorite" the tweet.

When you click the little star that appears, it turns yellow, and that tweet gets added to your "Favorites" tab. As you track what people are saying about your company in Twitter Search, add the positive tweet to your Favorites. Public, third-party testimonials are valuable validations of your company. The next time someone asks about your company, send them the link to your Favorites page!

4) Promote events
Use Twitter to promote events, webinars, fundraisers, and campaigns. The next time your company holds such an event, tweet about it! One best practice is to send people directly to an event sign-up page. Think of a hashtag for your event or webinar before you start tweeting about it.

5) Share expertise
Establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. By tweeting about useful resources and thoughtful tips, you and your company will eventually be considered an expert in that particular subject. Be sure to link to your own resouces as well as others.

6) Employ external tools
Twitter monitoring and participating sounds like a whole lot of work, but it doesn't have to be. Use third-party tools to ease the process! At WhiteSpace we use Hootsuite  to help us plan and execute our tweets on a regular basis. Actually, you may have found this blog through one of our tweets.

7) Experiment with Twitter advertising
Use Promoted Tweets  to amplify your message with targeting options on Twitter and across mobile devices to reach the right person, in the right place, at the right time. Twitter offers several paid advertising options; Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends, Promoted Accounts, but I'd say the most effective of which is the promoted tweet. Promoted Tweets targeted to search terms appear at the top of the results page. Since more people see these tweets, more people will click on them and thus become part of your prospect pool.

Have you been using Twitter with success? Let me know how your business has been able to leverage Twitter for your business.

Posted in: B2B,marketing,medios sociales,publicidad,Twitter