Twitter recently released a how-to guide called Twitter 101. While we sift through it to find more material for a longer post, Jeff Cohen has already done this and posted a brief summary over at Social Media B2B. Some of the points he gleaned from the Guide:
It’s about relationships. Hmmm… social media is about relationships; B2B selling is often characterized as “relationship selling”. It’s a clear-cut congruence that we’ve pointed out in… oh, maybe 3 or 4 previous posts. Even B2B buyers are people first, who buy from people they trust; and trust grows out of relationships.
It’s real-time. Buyers who have questions will expect responses today, not next week or month; and they will tend to value those vendors who understand this and respond appropriately. If everything your company says in public has to be approved by a VP and/or Legal, Twitter is probably not going to be your vehicle. Empower your employees and trust the training you’ve invested in them.
Measure the value. Initially, simple numbers (followers, mentions, responses) will do. As time goes on, you’ll want to develop metrics that more explicitly tie Twitter usage to leads and sales; and hopefully some of these will begin to gain industry currency soon.
Or you can rely on the recent ENGAGEMENTdb study (conducted by Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group), which shows that companies measured as having “the greatest breadth and depth of social media engagement” grew revenues by 18% over the last year, while the least-engaged companies dropped 6% on average. Yes, it’s only a correlation… but there’s no question which of those groups you want to be in.
