Marketing is a critical function for a B2B organization of any size. Whether there are five employees or 50,000, businesses must master how to connect and engage potential customers. Social media marketing has seen rapid growth, with Twitter following close behind LinkedIn as one of the top two most-used social media platforms for B2B marketers.
Yes, Twitter is no longer the platform solely for 280-character anecdotes or quick news snippets. It’s also the perfect place for B2B organizations to reach their target audience. Over 82% of B2B marketers have employed Twitter in their marketing strategy within the last year.
As with any marketing approach, some B2B organizations are more successful on Twitter than others because they have mastered how to market on Twitter. No two social media platforms are exactly the same, and each one should be treated as a unique tool available to marketing teams. This post will detail why you should be using the platform and give you ten tips for success with B2B marketing on Twitter.
Quick Links
- Why Should You Use Twitter for B2B Marketing?
- The Benefits of Twitter for B2B Marketing
- 10 Tips for Success with B2B Marketing on Twitter
Why Should You Use Twitter for B2B marketing?
The rise of influencer marketing has encouraged many B2C organizations to flock to social media, partnering with internet stars to sell their product. But there is an ever-growing market for B2B organizations to employ these same platforms, albeit a little differently than their B2C counterparts.
One exciting advantage of Twitter is that more and more business professionals see their phones as a critical component of their work. Studies show that 84% of millennials consider their phones essential to their job. Since Twitter is primarily a mobile platform, the platform supports professionals that like to be able to take their work anywhere. This on-the-go availability ensures that B2B marketers can reach their target audience at any time of day or night.
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While LinkedIn remains the most used platform for purposes of content marketing, this doesn’t mean B2B marketers should focus solely on it and ignore other available platforms. The more platforms B2B companies use, the wider their reach, which means there are more opportunities to connect with the right people waiting to utilize your services.
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The Benefits of Twitter for B2B Marketing
Twitter offers brands a chance to interact more seamlessly with potential customers while providing a thriving advertising space. Twitter users spend 26% more time viewing ads on the platform than on any other social media platform. Two out of three B2B marketers find Twitter the most effective social platform to help their business achieve specific objectives.
Twitter also has built-in essential B2B marketing features that give organizations a chance to thrive on the platform. Among these are:
- The ability to let followers know if a business account offers customer and product-related support
- Automated welcoming messages to engage followers
- Quick reply options to make the customer experience a breeze.
Twitter’s customer-centric approach supports the entire customer journey from A to Z, and makes it stand out from other social platforms.
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10 Tips for Success with B2B Marketing on Twitter
Social media strategies can be complex. Trying to figure out how to make each algorithm happy, connect with various audiences, and post optimal and captivating content can often feel like an unsolvable puzzle. The good news is that every puzzle has a solution. With our top ten Twitter tips, your B2B organization can reap the benefits of an optimized social presence immediately.
1. Let Your Branding Shine
Social media allows organizations to build their brand in a different, more effective way than ever before. Brands now have the opportunity to connect on a human level with key decision-makers and showcase brand values. Don’t let this opportunity stop your organization from mastering the branding basics.
Your Twitter profile should be clear about who your brand is, what you do, and what you offer clients. General Electric has an effective branding approach with their photo, name, handle, and tagline all working together well.
2. Offer Value to Your Audience
B2B buyers are always looking for additional value propositions from the brands they support, even if they aren’t consciously aware of it. By taking time on social media to provide education, offer an inside look at the business, or even showcase leadership profiles, potential customers will feel like they know the brand better and be more likely to support it.
Adobe does a great job of engaging its followers in various ways, including offering grants, providing tutorials on the best use of their tools, and asking engaging questions to get its audience interacting.
3. Avoid Constant Sales Posts
Though it’s natural for B2B marketers to start thinking of sales pitches and discount blitzes, it’s important to remember that social media constantly bombards audiences with information and advertisements. Many users have become accustomed to tuning out annoying sales pitches. If an organization uses Twitter solely to try and make sales, its following will start tuning that brand out, which is the opposite of the goal.
Deloitte does a great job promoting its organization without trying to lock down sales. Instead of being too direct, they spend time-sharing thoughts from their leaders on specific offerings, industry statistics, and more.
4. Find the Right Collaborations
Although B2B marketing organizations are not trying to sell a trendy juice cleanse or apparel item, using professional influencers can be a game-changer in many industries. Twitter is full of B2B influencers just waiting for the right product to partner with them. A whopping 84% of B2B marketers work with influencers to create brand awareness, and you should too.
Think about it this way – if someone hears about your organization’s brand from a thought leader they trust, they are much more likely to pursue a purchase than if they were to only hear about a brand by the brand itself.
5. Set a Content Strategy
Sixteen percent of internet users from the ages of 16 to 64 use Twitter to research brands that are of interest. In the marketing world, this means that organizations need to have a content strategy for Twitter B2B marketing. It’s not enough to have an account on the platform and hope for the best. Brands must develop a clean, well-executed strategy to ensure posts are frequent, high-quality, and add value to support the brand’s credibility.
It can be helpful to look at what your competitors or others in your industry are doing on their pages. Of course, don’t copy a strategy that is not authentic to your organization. But don’t be afraid to learn from the successes and failures of others on the platform.
6. Measure Your Success
You wouldn’t publish a specific marketing campaign without understanding the metrics surrounding that campaign’s success. Twitter has a built-in analytics tool allowing marketers to measure the success of their Twitter strategy with real-time data regarding follower count, Tweet engagement, and more.
Research shows that goals are up to 3 times more likely to be reached if they are set with a measurable strategy. Social media marketing is no different. By using data to track your organization’s success on a platform and properly assess progress towards a goal, you will find more success on the platform in the long run.
7. Create Community & Discourse
Twitter is the premier space for having conversations with an audience, putting feelers out to gauge the overarching opinion, and allowing followers to interact with one another. Creative engagement methods such as polls, infographics, and statistics will start a healthy discussion and ultimately create a community around your brand. Twitter Spaces allows brands to build deeper connections with their clients through discussions, virtual events, and more.
Dun & Bradstreet gracefully illustrates what it looks like to create discourse and build a community by regularly asking its followers simple but meaningful questions.
8. Use Hashtags Carefully
It’s tempting to flood each tweet with trending hashtags in hopes you will catch the attention of a potential customer. However, staying consistent and building a relationship will pay off better than throwing together a bunch of hashtags every time your organization posts.
A recent study showed that tweets with more than three hashtags experienced a drop in engagement by at least 17%. Other platforms may benefit from a more-is-more approach, such as Instagram, but the chances are your fresh new content will be ignored if you overuse hashtags on Twitter.
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9. Take Advantage of Twitter Ads
More than one in four Twitter users spend more time looking at advertisements than users on other social platforms. A study by Twitter and Publicis Media found that people are more likely to take action on ads they’ve seen on Twitter and seek additional product or brand information based on ads they’ve remembered seeing.
Advertising on Twitter is one of the most cost-effective social platforms compared to other channels. For context, at $6.46, Twitter’s cost-per-mille (CPM) is lower than Pinterest’s $30 and YouTube’s $9.68 CPM. So, now is an excellent time to run Twitter ads before the space becomes saturated.
10. Twitter Isn’t a Dumping Ground
Instead of recycling Instagram posts, using the same LinkedIn polls, and reposting your organization’s TikTok videos to Twitter, use the platform as an entity unto itself. The audience on Twitter doesn’t want the same content your Instagram audience wants. Do your best to post original content on all platforms. Fresh, provocative Twitter threads packed with value are always engaging, or use the platform’s immediacy to comment on the latest industry news. And don’t be afraid to have fun on Twitter.
For example, Duolingo is notorious on TikTok for its satirical commentary and witty content, but on the organization’s Twitter, there are no TikTok re-posts to be found.
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Build Your Own Nest on Twitter
With the push for video content happening across many platforms, it’s easy for marketers to lose Twitter in the shuffle. Instead of being an afterthought, Twitter should be a priority for B2B marketers. Since Twitter ads reach almost 6% of the world population over the age of 13, the platform clearly has many opportunities and benefits for B2B organizations.
If your company has yet to create its own Twitter profile or is looking for ways to improve reach and drive more sales, you can begin by using it for social listening to see what your audience is saying about your brand. You can then leverage these insights to create content that addresses this customer dialogue. Oktopost’s social listening tool is a powerful way to get intel on what your customers want and what your competitors are doing.
B2B marketing on Twitter offers potentially massive customer reach, and if you follow these ten tips for success, you’ll surely find it. Take advantage of Oktopost’s B2B Social Engagement Suite to ensure your success. Designed especially for B2B marketers and full of powerful automation and analytics, it’s a Tweet-worthy B2B social media tool that consistently delivers high ROI.
