Use Twitter to Connect the Dots and Produce B2B Marketing Results

Guest Post by Trey Pennington.

Social media continues to be a hot topic of discussion among marketers. While Facebook seems to get most of the press, Twitter gets its fair share, too. The discussion ranges from, “What do I do with Twitter?” to, “How much money can I make with Twitter?” Though we’re still in the site’s pioneering days for B2B marketers, it is safe to say that it can help you produce results.

When some people ask about results, they say something like, “What’s the ROI of Twitter?” That’s a good question to explore, but it’s not THE question marketers should dive into first. Instead, asking, “Where are our marketing roadblocks?” will set up a process that leads to marketing results. When marketers take the time to define and map their marketing-to-sales process, they can then highlight potential marketing roadblocks. Once those roadblocks are defined, they can explore the potential impact of Twitter.

There are four key roadblocks Twitter can help marketers overcome:

• The roadblock of obscurity—not enough people know about you.
• The roadblock of ambiguity—not enough people recognize they have a problem that you can help them solve.
• The roadblock of indifference—not enough people see your solution as the key solution to their problem.
• The roadblock of confusion—not enough people know where to find or how to use your existing content to tell others about your solution.

Twitter is exceptionally powerful at connecting you with a wide universe of strangers. Without much difficulty, you can find people using your keywords in their tweets. You can follow them, which will prompt many to follow you. That will help you climb over the obscurity roadblock.

The ultimate power of Twitter, though, comes through its ability to help connect your existing marketing content with people who may be seeking help or talking about their problems. Twitter is not as much about content creation as it is about content connection. (Yes, I both buy into and preach the typical “relationship, community and genuine conversations” mantra. Even so, I’m most impressed with Twitter as a connecting-the-dots tool.)

If you’ll map your marketing-to-sales process, you can identify marketing roadblocks and then, using Twitter, you can connect your existing content with people traveling along the marketing-to-sales journey. When you do, you’ll experience marketing results in awareness, visits, click-throughs, shares, views, downloads and more.