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Market Smart: How to Gain Customers and Increase Profits with B2B Marketing

interested in and able to be the Twitter go-to. They have to
fully commit to being active—very active—on Twitter.

No matter which strategy you use, make sure that your tweets
are useful, interesting, and compelling to your target audience.
The goal is for your Twitter community to do something—ask
for more information, arrange a meeting, place an order, or
otherwise engage with you.

Tweeting Tools

Most serious Twitter users have turned to alternative
interfaces to tweet, send direct messages, and organize their
followers—and these outside programs also offer additional
features, such as the ability to schedule tweets in advance,
tweet from multiple accounts, and track specific hashtags and
conversations.

HootSuite (www.hootsuite.com) is a web based platform that
adds incredible functionality to tweeting whether you choose
the free or premium versions. Another option is Tweetdeck
(www.tweetdeck.com).

Facebook

Facebook hardly needs an introduction—it’s the de facto social
networking site, moving towards one billion users around the
globe.

But can this powerful social networking tool help you market
your business? Yes—but only to a certain degree. Facebook
will be a major resource for B2B companies to market
themselves, but it’s not there yet for most B2B industries.

While not many small and mid-size B2B companies are using
Facebook as a primary marketing or business development
function, I suggest setting up a “Fan Page” for your company
and using it to engage with customers and prospects. Setting

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© 2012 Lisa Shepherd