Should You Become More Social and ‘Tweet’ for B2B Business?
Brendan O’Connell, Director of Web Operations at ThomasNet,
was an early adopter of social media and has been on Twitter since
early 2007. (http://twitter.com/triggerfinger).
He tells us how you can use services like Twitter as part of your businesses’
online marketing plans.
Forrester recently released new
research revealing that B2B buyers have very high social participation.
According to Forrester’s Social Technographics of Business
Buyers,
“55% of technology decision-makers were in social networks (Joiners) --
despite as mature businesspeople and not college students, you'd think
they'd be participating a lot less.”
If you’re not already
participating in social media or including social networks in your
online marketing efforts, it’s time to consider your options.
Let’s look at one of the more popular social network. Twitter (www.Twitter.com)
is just one of several social media options available to us today.
You’ve probably heard of Twitter by now, whether in the news media, the
buzz about CNN vs. Ashton Kutcher, or Oprah coming on board. Twitter is
the fastest-growing major website in the U.S. It had 17 million
registered users in the U.S. in April — up 3,000% from a year ago,
according to the latest market research from ComScore.
So what’s the buzz all about? And what’s in it for businesses?
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables
its users to send and read other users' updates known as “tweets.”
ThomasNet is on Twitter
(@ThomasNet).
Twitter can be a good starting point for your initiation into the social
media world. From there, you should be able to determine if incorporating
social media in your online marketing plans makes sense for your business.
In order to be successful with Twitter, or any of the social sites, you
will need to start with a plan. At ThomasNet we say, “You cannot manage
what you cannot measure,” and before you start, you need to do the
following:
- set your company’s goals
- determine how you are going to measure your efforts, and
- decide who is going to be responsible for managing your company’s
social media efforts.
Some possible goals for your company’s social media efforts might be
improving brand awareness, helping with customer service efforts, driving traffic
to your website, and acquiring leads, among others.
To measure the success of your efforts, you can look at inquiries to your
website, how customer service feedback improves, track the number of leads
recorded in your online conversations and more.
Decide who will be responsible for your company’s social media
efforts and how they’ll engage with your customers and report back to
your company by answering these questions:
- Will there be one person or a team responsible for your company’s
social media efforts?
- What is the “voice” of your company and key messages you wish
to relay?
- How will people engage with your company?
- What is the protocol if a client complains or competitors start to follow
you?
- What is the role of personal accounts?
There are other questions, too, that you might want to consider when
developing your company’s social media plans. It all depends on your
goals.
Once your company's goals and ground rules are set, you’ll need to
claim your brand throughout the world of social media. Let’s start with
Twitter. Even if your company is not going to tweet, you should make sure that
someone else does not grab your company’s Twitter name and misrepresent
your company or brand -- a mistake several Fortune 100 companies have already
made!
Set up your company’s Twitter
account now.
Go to www.twitter.com
and register your company's name, as well as your key brand/product names.
Accounts are free and you should secure them before your competition does.
Even if your company never plans on using Twitter, you should protect your
company and brand names on Twitter (and all social sites). It’s a
good idea to keep a spreadsheet of all the names you register, the usernames
and passwords.
Next, you can corporatize/personalize the Twitter account(s) using your
company/brand logo, a one-line bio, and an appropriate background. There are
many sites that you can use to help you develop a custom background, such as
Tweetbacks,
Twitterimage,
Twitpaper,
if you don’t have a graphic designer on staff. The Twitter background
should align with your goals and resemble the colors, format and logo of your
website/brand.
Start “tweeting”
(communicating and responding)!
Log onto Twitter and post
your first company tweet. Remember, each tweet on Twitter is limited
to 140 characters. Have a plan to tweet at least once a week –
and more frequently if appropriate.
Track activity based on those tweets. Remember tweeting is a process and
you can’t just tweet “buy our stuff” over and over again and
expect to gain followers or sales.
Company tweets should be a mix of company news, customer support, feedback
and special offers. If you have an RSS feed of your company’s blog you
can easily feed it to your Twitter account using a service such as
Twitterfeed.
Start following -- and get a
following.
Part of your marketing plan on Twitter is to
acquire followers. Be sure to add your company's Twitter name to all appropriate
e-mails/newsletters/business cards and to put it on your website and in your
blog. Run a contest, offer coupons or discounts for followers.
Take a look at your peers’ and your competitors’ Twitter
profiles to see who they are following or who is following them to find people
that you should be following, too. Use tools like the
Twitter
Search and
Twellow
for additional followers.
Also, know that your competitors will likewise be following you so be
careful what you tweet.
Engage your followers by following them, asking questions, offering
discounts/coupons, answering questions and “retweeting” their
tweets. Be sure to follow ThomasNet
(@ThomasNet)
and we’ll be happy to follow you, too!
If you have any questions about incorporating social media and Twitter
in your B2B online marketing plans, send a tweet to
@ThomasNet
or email us at
industrialmarketer@thomasnet.com.
