If your customers are other small businesses then business-to-business (B2B) marketing should be your focus. What platform should is best for B2B marketing? Hands down, it’s Twitter.
Twitter is more than pop culture and politics. When used effectively for small business, it serves several marketing purposes: brand awareness, public relations, listening, content curation, and relationship building. Bonus: Twitter also helps with SEO!
Twitter is for Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is high-level, less-tangible, and difficult to measure. It’s almost a word-association game.
I say “tissue;” you say “Kleenex.” I say “photocopy;” you say “Xerox.” I say groceries, you say “H.E.B.” (Am I right, San Antonio?)
You want your brand to be able to be associated with your purpose. Recognition of your business logo — or headshot — on Twitter allows your small business to compete with the bigger companies. The big guys rarely invest in social media; don’t make their mistakes.
Twitter levels the playing field when it comes to brand awareness. Are you using it? Share on XTwitter is for Public Relations
Your small business has news; people want to know it. Share all of your news on Twitter. Not in a Press Release, but with tweets linking to your blog posts.
What would you share? Promotions, product sales, new ventures, employees that join in, new partnerships, and case studies are all perfect to Tweet.
People will always talk about you even if you aren’t on Twitter. Being ahead of the message is PR 101; do this on Twitter. Be proactive.
This is why consistent publishing on your WordPress blog is vital. Write articles about anything relevant to your audience. Then promote the article on Twitter — a few different ways. Every brand has the ability to publish and gain influence and audience.
I specifically designed a content planner and ebook to help you through this process. There’s also my free WordPress Plugin: Launch With Words and the starter pack to help give you blogging prompts. But I digress.
How do you promote your events and announce products? Share on XTwitter is for Listening
Listening is the most powerful thing a B2B business can do with Twitter. It’s important to understand who your audience is and what they want, need, and how they think. Seriously, people talk about themselves on Twitter all day long. You know what bands they like, who they’re voting for, what airlines upset them, and if they’re dating or looking for a job. Have you been listening to your audience?
Marketing personas are essentially stereotypes. When’s the last time you updated your company’s personas? Instead of relying solely on a marketing persona based upon “Bob,” you can actually see what Bob is tweeting about and update that persona. Bob from 10 years ago liked IPAs; now he collects wine. Time to update the “Bob” persona.
Using Twitter Lists to Listen allows you to:
- Pain points.
- Correcting personas.
- Responding.
- Engaging.
- Focus Group.
Twitter is for Content Curation
Once you’ve built your lists, you are ready to curate content to enhance relationship building for your B2B business. We all know that B2B is all about relationships. Share blog posts from the people on your Twitter lists in parallel industries. Are you a beauty brand? Share fashion tips? Are you a cremation service? Share information on life insurance. Reciprocation is powerful. You’ve helped promote other businesses and found good content. This is a win-win.
While managing social media accounts for my clients, the Twitter curation process is how I source articles and posts for their LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram business accounts.
The tools I use to curate content are simple.
It’s about people; not tools. I’m a People Curator — a People Broker, I say. I curate content by curating people. This is why building lists and paying attention to those audiences is effective in your B2B marketing.
Are you only tweeting about yourself and your business? That isn’t social. Share on XTwitter is for Relationship Building — Perfect for B2B
All business happens because of referrals (word of mouth) and none more so than B2B. We live and die by referrals. Think back to the last time you got a new client. How did you acquire them?
Think of the last time you found a new service. Did you search for them online? Google? Yelp?
Almost no one does business with a total stranger. Use Twitter to build relationships. Reply to people. Engage. You won’t regret it.
Relationships follow you throughout your career. They follow brands, too. Start chatting with people today. Share on XUpdated March 20, 2022
13 responses to “What is the Best Platform for B2B? The X Platform (Twitter). Hands Down.”
Yes! Listening is the most important thing, and using lists lets you listen more easily to people you follow (or don’t follow!). Thank you for the reassurance about B2B and Twitter.
Carol Stephen
Right? I often hear people who don’t understand why they feel disconnected to their audience. Well, you have to listen to them.
We don’t know what we don’t know. For some businesses, mainly b2c, we generate dozens of new leads per week using google and search marketing. For others, mainly b2b, it hardly works at all – and social is the way forward. I’m still piecing this together, but I thought I would share given your point of view 🙂
Thank you so much, Matt.
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