I was catching up on some reading and came across a new article in BtoB from Rich Karpinski, B-to-b followers flock to Twitter.  It is a great article especially if you are new to Twitter or wanting to know more about how businesses are using Twitter to connect with prospects and customers.

Since we are all about tips on The B2B Lead, here is some practical advice from the article for marketers getting started on Twitter:

• In your Twitter bio, clearly spell out what business you are in, who is posting to the account and even what you hope to get out of it. That creates transparency and the underpinnings of trust.
• Find people to follow. They’ll likely follow you back, broadening and enriching your conversation.
• To start, sit back and watch conversations unfold. As your comfort level grows, be proactive by participating in and starting conversations related to your business.
• Be generous: Offer more than you get back and always try to be responsive to peers and customers.

Finding the right people to follow can be challenging.  Karpinski offers this advice:
Locating other b-to-b marketers and companies that “tweet” has become easier, too. Ad network Federated Media late last month launched (with Microsoft Corp. as sponsor) ExecTweets.com, an aggregation of executives using Twitter, and the Social Brand Index offers an index of Twitter accounts organized by category. One also can find lists of b-to-b marketing-focused Twitter users with a Google search.

I was happy to see one of the smartest B2B marketers I know, Jon Miller from Marketo, quoted in the article:
“B-to-b buyers are still people, and in the end, they buy from people and not companies,” said Jon Miller (@jonmiller2), VP-marketing at b-to-b software vendor Marketo (@marketo), who uses Twitter personally and as part of his company’s marketing strategy. “If you can build a relationship with a prospective buyer using Twitter before they are actively looking, you built your brand more effectively than you could with much more expensive options. The trick is to know who to follow and who to focus on for that relationship-building.”

But Miller doesn’t think Twitter is the be-all and end-all. “Tweets don’t yet show up in Google search results, and links can’t influence your SEO rankings,” he said, adding, “I think other tools like blogs still work better as the content publishing mechanism, versus [using Twitter more as] a content promotion tool.”

How are you engaging with customers and prospects on Twitter?  Want to connect with us on Twitter?  Check us out at:

@ReachForce
@suaadsait
@ahawthorne
@lawallace