What's there to Tweet about?

Now that you have established that you want to say something – what can you say?

Everyone likes to be thanked, right?
Include the “@” symbol before the Twitter name, e.g. Thanks @sheremarketing for attending our webinar on “How to Tweet for Business”. You can strengthen a relationship, show others you have a relationship with this person and promote something that your business offers at the same time.

Do you know of any non-promotional useful information?
What information can you share with others that will be useful to them, can you share something you have learnt, a link you have found, a tool that saves you time or money? This only works if you are helping others for the purpose of providing information – no the idea is not to sell your products and services!

How about congratulating your followers?
If you are following a business contact that has been mentioned in an acticle why not send them a message. Use the @ sign before the twitter name, e.g. @sheremarketing . For example, “@sheremarketing – Great sustainable design in Architects magazine". They’ll appreciate the pat on the back and others might follow you because you know someone who has been featured in a magazine. Yes, that does happen!

Are you doing anything which might interest others?
No one wants to know what you are thinking of having for lunch, but they might be interested to know if you are running in a charity marathon, or participating in an event which might interest others (running, walking, cycling, sailing – what other interest might they share?). People connect with people after all.

Nothing to say, then why not Re-tweet?
It is legitimate to forward a message from someone else, this shows that you read what your followers send to you and that you respect other people’s ideas. Put “RT” before the message.

What about my latest promotion?
You can use promotional messages on Twitter and the occasional “price reduced today only”, or “sign up for my webinar” or “free shipping ends today” are useful but don’t overdo it. You don’t want to be the person that everyone avoids because you are hard selling all the time.

With correct and thoughtful usage, Twitter can be a great way to create new and strengthen existing relationships and will help you to grow your business.

For more B2B Marketing Top Tips - check out http://www.sheremarketing.co.uk/

How to build a B2B Twitter following?

You could try following hundreds of thousands of Twitter users and hope some of those automatically follow back. You’d obviously want to delete the ones who don’t follow you back! But I doubt very much whether this group of followers will actually pay any attention to what you are tweeting?

If you have tried to use Twitter for business and have found establishing your existing Twitter presence an uphill struggle, or if you are thinking about how best to tackle your entry into using Twitter for business here are some thoughts:

Do you need convincing about the benefits of Twitter?
Forget about it – just accept that Twitter has a role as a business communication channel for most B2B companies.

Do you think that Twitter will help you establish interpersonal relationships with your customers or prospects?
Forget about it - it won’t! Twitter is good for mass communication. Connect on Twitter and then take the conversation outside.

Do you generally speak when you have nothing to say?
Tweeting interesting things such as clickable links to resources, tips etc, can drive growth in followers. This is better in driving follower growth than just Tweeting regularly. You wouldn’t issue random press releases or email newsletters without any relevant content, so why would you change your strategy for Tweeting?

For more B2B Marketing Top Tips -check out www.sheremarketing.co.uk

B2B Email Marketing

Despite all the buzz about social media, email marketing is still very relevant for B2B marketing. To achieve the best results, here are my top 5 tips for B2B email marketing.

Always use permission based marketing techniques
It's the law. Not doing so can lead to a customer service nightmare, and you could have your contract terminated by your ISP. Always use an easy "unsubsribe" option and honour requests.

Never harvest email addresses
Harvesting can generate huge email prospect databases at extremely low cost - but the ROI is negative. Harvested lists typically generate click through rates of less than 0.01%. In you run the risk of being accused of illegaly spamming and having your account blocked. So this is never a good idea.

Always send a confirmation auto responder
Confirmation auto reply improves database quality - and quality outweighs quantity. Opt-in confirmation is generally preferable as recipient has made a decision to receive emails they are more likely to open them.

Never falsify the sender or subject line information
Never use tactics intended to mislead clients.

Track, measure and measure again
Email marketing without tracking, measurement and continuous evolution, based on analysis of the programme, cannot deliver best ROI.

For more B2B Marketing Top Tips - check out www.sheremarketing.co.uk