B-to-B Marketers: What Type of Twitterer Are You?

March 3, 2010

People use Twitter for different reasons. From a B-to-B perspective, why do you? For those of us who are trying  to use Twitter as a marketing tool, you normally have a reason for using it. Twitter is a conversational platform. What kinds of conversations are you having?

I read a post recently from Jason Falls (a social media guy who I admire), Four styles of marketing on Twitter, and thought he hit it right on the head. Here are highlights of the Twitter styles:

Twitter Marketing Styles

Twitter Marketing Scale

  • Conversationalists - Want to use Twitter for business, but will participate in the daily conversations.
  • Conversational Marketer - Participate but with a stated purpose. They remind you of their newsletter or link you back to their blog.
  • The Salesman - Less conversational and more to the point of why they are here. These folks, even though they put sales first, still contribute good info and links to their followers.
  • The Broadcaster - Self promotion is the only reason they are there. They don’t participate in conversations and don’t contribute to the group.

So the question arises, what kind of Twitterer are you?

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Twitter: How Useful is This Tool for B-to-B Marketers?

November 17, 2009

twitterSome B-to-B marketers are having a hard time including Twitter in the marketing mix. You need to think of it as a relationship-building tool. Twitter should never be used as a stand-alone tactic. It should be used in conjunction with other social media as well as traditional tools like e-mail. Jon VanZile wrote an interesting post, Is B-to-B Ready For Twitter? that you might find interesting.

One of the concerns of B-to-B marketers is that “none of my customers or potentials are on Twitter.” While that may be true now, they will be soon. And how do you know unless you ask them? This week Twitter passed the 5 billion tweet mark. Somebody is using it! According to a study released this summer by Nielsen Co., Twitter growth has been phenomenal especially toward adults. According to Nielsen, Twitter reaches 11% of all Internet users. 80% of people who Tweet are over 25.

While you’re waiting for your customers to get in the game, Twitter still offers you some great free analytic tools you should be using to keep track of competitors as well as find conversations related to a post or article. Here are 5 good ones to start:

  1. Twitterstats Hour-by-hour and for any 24-hour period, track up to three keywords (think competitors) w/g/t click volume.  Useful if, for example, there’s news being dropped during the same time period and/or an event/tradeshow and you want to compare message volume/activity around keywords or companies.
  2. Tweeps.info Nifty free tool that lets you track on individual Twitter accounts (think YOUR competitors). Inside look at #tweets per day, current and prominent keywords, to what degree the account is using hashtags, following snapshot. Also has a keyword search which is useful if you’re looking to build your follow list around a particular topic.
  3. BackTweets A real-time, conversational-tracking tool which allows for keyword and/or URL searches to find conversations related to a post or article; connects: WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Twitter and Friendfeed. Useful for community buzz centralized listening, brand monitoring. An “alert” function.
  4. Twitteranalyzer Google Analytics for Twitter users. More than 50 statistical measures displayed with graphics and maps. Among the views:  Reach, Subject Matter, Follower Growth, Follower Density Map, Follower Activity, Sharing Capability. Primarily a tool for Twitter users to analyze themselves or their friends.
  5. TwitterFriends A “reach/extended-reach” tracking tool that helps you discover information about the network behind your follower/their follower lists.  Identifies meaningful users you should be talking to, or who are feeding you useful links. Capability to account search/compare (think comparing your company to your competitors, or thought leader accounts, etc.)

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Social Networks Continue to Gain in Popularity

October 21, 2009

Social media as a whole continues to surpass growth estimates. eMarketer reported earlier this month that Twitter has over 18 million adults who access on at least a monthly basis. That’s a 200% increase over last year.

US Adult Twitter Users, 2008-2010 (millions and % of adult Internet users)

Universal McCann’s “Power to the people-social media tracker” also sees social networking continuing to increase. eMarketer estimates that 44.2% of all Internet users in the U.S. are social network users. Worldwide, 62.5% of active users ages 16-54 have a social networking profile in 2009. Worldwide, 62.5% of active Internet users ages 16-54 have a social network profile.

  Social Networking Site Activities of Social Network Users Worldwide, March 2009 (% of respondents)

Users are looking to social networking sites that can consolidate multiple social media into one place. As noted above, despite consolidation, social media is not a one-stop shop. Universal McCann advises marketers to give consumers options when engaging them through social media. Allowing individuals to share and discuss on their platform of choice remains important.

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Social Media Users are Focusing More on Brands

October 14, 2009

The idea of marketers adopting social media by the boatloads is not a surprising statement. One of their biggest concerns has been will the consumer return the favor. Well some recent data shows that half of social networking users have became a fan or follower of a brand online. eMarketer recently published a report from Anderson Analytics that said, “52% of social network users had become a fan or follower of a company or brand, while 465 had said something good about the brand or company on a social networking site, double the percentage who had said something negative (23%).“

Social Networking Site Activities of US Social Network Users, May 2009 (% of respondents)

Another study from Penn State indicated that 20% of all tweets mention specific brand names or products. They studied over 500,ooo tweets and found both positive and negative comments about the brands or products.

Measuring social media success remains difficult for marketers. Many of the metrics that marketers can track on social networks today involve what is called “soft ROI”— which does not show up in the bottom line. But a study from the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint, along with a separate study from Razorfish, indicates that the stronger a brand’s social media presence, the better the brand performed—whether measured in conversations or in financial performance.

“Social networks are a constantly changing database of consumer sentiment, attitudes and information, and marketers today have only the earliest glimpse of the potential,” said Ms. Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer. “Companies that want to maximize their presence on the social Web must take advantage of social networks in all stages of the purchase funnel, from awareness to learning to buying to loyalty.”

What does this mean to you and me? It means that you can’t just simply set up shop on social and sit back and wait for people to come. Users are seeking out their favorite brands whether it’s online or through other avenues and you must be there.

Maximize your social network marketing. Download the new eMarketer report, “Marketing on Social Networks: Branding, Buying and Beyond,” now.

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Use Social Media To Generate Professional Tradesmen Leads

August 5, 2009

imagesThere are many traditional ways of generating leads, i.e. pay for click, list rentals, etc. But social lets you go beyond some of these typical methods and lets people find you. In my mind, one of the biggest benefits to social media is the ability to identify and start conversations in a low-key manner with potential contractors. The two top tools I use are LinkedIn and Twitter.

LinkedIn - I find that this is a very useful and friendly site for B-to-B users. The group section is a great way to join groups with common interests and start participating.

  • I’ve joined groups like E-marketing Association Network and The Air Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration Institute. Both are targeted and are great ways to see what the hot topic of the day is and how people are reacting to it. You can even start your own group and invite people to join.
  • It’s a great spot to throw out a question to the group or put your two cents in on an area where you are an expert.
  • I’ve also used these groups to do short surveys and I post at least once a week and sometimes twice a recent relevant post from my blog under the news section. This helps drive folks to my blog and hopefully position me as an expert.
  • You also need to update your status regularly and make sure your co-workers do the same. We’re in the process of organizing a webinar and will not only post it on my page for folks to register, but also put it as a news item on my group pages.

Twitter – I use Twitter to communicate to my followers many times a day to promote my most recent posts.

  • I use Tweetlater to schedule and manage my daily tweets. There are several other applications out there that do the same thing.
  • If you want to reach people who don’t follow you, include relevant hashtags. Experienced users will search for those terms.
  • Encourage re-tweets. In order to do so you need to keep your message shorter than the 140 characters so the person who is doing the re-tweet has room for their name and message.

These are some things I do to use social to generate leads. I’d like to hear from you on how you utilize social.

Here’s an article that might prove to be of interest, 5 Ways to Find Prospects on Twitter.

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5 Ways to Find Prospects on Twitter

July 16, 2009

twitter-birdFinding your  best prospective client online audience is not yet an exact science. But for now you can be in the right ballpark. The same is true regarding Twitter. There are plenty of search applications out there, but all have their limitations. The following five sites have been the most helpful to me in locating prospective client “tweeps” to follow.

1. Twitter Search – Twitter’s built-in people search is the easiest place to start, but isn’t necessarily the best way to find people on Twitter. Twitter Search is much better, especially using their advanced search page. Be sure and check out their search operations pages for some handy examples for your search query.

2. Twellow – Is an excellent search tool for prospective clients with over 6.2 million Twitter user profiles now indexed in Twellow and placed into a huge number of categories. You can search the entire lot of profiles, or confine searches to a single category. Twellow also operates a local directory called the “Twellowhood.”

3. Tweepz – Allows you limited searches to specific parts of Twitter’s user information (such as name, bio and location). Through the advanced search filter results by follower/following numbers, location, and other extracted terms, enhances your search results.

4. Twitterel –  You can search for prospective clients to follow by doing keyword searches of tweets. This service can update you by email, direct message, or @reply when it finds new people it thinks you might be interested in following. It’s similar to Google Alerts.

5. WeFollow – Is a Twitter user directory that organizes people by hashtags. WeFollow is user-generated and anyone can add themselves by tweeting @wefollow with three #hashtags that describe them.

If you have helpful search sites/directories that have been helpful to you, please share them in the comment section below.

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What’s Your Grade on Twitter?

July 15, 2009

twittergraderSocial media is trying to be taken seriously, and in late 2008 came out with several tools to measure the effectiveness of Twitter. Two of the more popular tools are Twitter Grader (I scored 97.6 out of 100) and Twinfluence (I scored 98 out of 100).

How much credibility do you put into these type tools? I use them as a guidepost to make sure I keep on track.

It makes me:

  • Check my network to get rid of non-contributing (spammers) followers.
  • Re-evaluate my end game to make sure you’re still on target. You want to search for like-minded people (in my case, those looking to talk to tradesmen). You’re not looking for the biggest list of followers; you’re looking for the right ones!
  • To make sure my messages are timely and rich in content for my target audience.

Twitter Grader bases its score on the number of followers you have, the power of your network, the frequency of your updates and how complete your profile is.

Twinfluence bases its criteria on Reach (what’s the maximum number of people that could get your tweet),Velocity (how fast are you adding followers), Social Capital (how many followers do your followers have) and Centralization (how dependent are you on a small number of followers who have big followings).

You may or may not agree on the metrics, but at least it’s a start. If it does nothing else but make you stop and evaluate your program at a 30,000-foot level, it has served a purpose.

So what are you waiting for? What’s your score?

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Two Ways You Can Get the Most Out of Your Blog Posts to B-to-B Marketers

June 25, 2009

blogpost1Beyond those who have signed up for your blog and those that reach you through organic searches, here are two ways I drive people to my blog.

1. Twitter. One of the applications, Tweetlater, allows you to pre-program when and what you want to tweet. I schedule tweets every hour during the business day and have got tremendous action. Twitter is by far my best source for page views.

2. LinkedIn Groups. One of the great advantages of LinkedIn, in my opinion, is that it’s more of a business site and you can join groups of like-minded folks. For example, I belong to the Industrial Marketing Mavens, E-Marketing Association and Sustainable Construction Groups. Each week I go up and post what I think is a relative subject to that audience under the news section. I get great feedback from them. I also use the group’s discussion option to get feedback on questions or issues.

We even put together a media schedule so we know what’s tweeting when and what posts were put onto LinkedIn. This gives us another way of monitoring what’s bringing  in the best results.

These are some ways I try to maximize my posts. I’d like to hear yours.

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5 Ways to use Twitter as a Tool to Reach the Professional Tradesman

June 15, 2009

B-to-B marketers are having a hard time figuring out the best way to use Twitter. If they understand that the people who are following them are obviously interested in them and their products, they’ve already pre-qualified themselves. Twitter has become my number-one source of activity to my blog.

Here are 5 ways I recommend using Twitter in a B-to-B setting:

  1. Share product and technical information: By putting up new product info, technical and other harder to obtain info on Twitter, you’re allowing tradesmen to keep up to date on information without distractions for search engines or even your web site.
  2. Drive people to your blog: One main objective is to get them to your blog, and Twitter is an ideal way of doing that. We use TweetLater to send out posts hourly during the business day. Our traffic has increased substantially since we started using this, and our followers have also increased.
  3. Keep up on competitors as well as what people are saying about you: We use Twitter Search as the tool to keep us informed. It’s fast and easy, much like Google Alerts. Wouldn’t you like to know who’s talking about buying something from your competitor?
  4. Share solutions for specific applications: Manufacturers can do everything from quick tips for tradesmen in the field, to best practices on how to get the most productivity in certain applications.
  5. Creating buzz at trade shows: This is relatively new, but is a great way to talk about the latest new widget at XYZ’s booth, and you really should stop by booth #2459. Obviously for this to work, you need to have a number of followers in that industry who are probably at the show. Even if they aren’t, you will have peaked their curiosity enough for them to look on your blog or web for more info on the product.

These are my top 5 ways…what are yours?

Here are a few more posts about Twitter that may be of interest to you:

Using Twitter in Customer Service

Use Twitter to Grow Your Brand

Twitter Search Benefits B-to-B Marketers

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Twitter: 5 Ways to Share Images

June 10, 2009

2120031Twittering is truly becoming one of the most important ways to share content in the social media arena. Beyond the obvious 140 characters limitation, there was no way to share images (a picture is worth a 1000 words). Since Twitter doesn’t have an application for this, third party vendors have come up with options for us that work on Twitter.

I recently read a post by Josh Catone, 5 ways to share images on Twitter, that I thought was both interesting and insightful on his part. He outlines our options and gives an overview of each of his examples. Here are some highlights of his 5 ways:

  1. Via a Twitter image sharing service
  2. Via SMS or Email
  3. Via Brightkite or FriendFeed
  4. Via Skitch
  5. Via an Encoded Tweet

Obviously, image sharing is the next logical step for Twitter and will probably drive more Tweets because of it.

If you’re already into images, I’d like to hear which one you prefer.

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