Love it or loathe it, social media has become a widely accepted tool for business-to-business interaction. While the business benefits of LinkedIn are widely acknowledged, the jury is still out on the likes of Facebook or Instagram for non-consumer brands. But it is Twitter that is most hotly debated when it comes to its benefits as a communications tool for the B2B world. To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question.
We believe that the use of Twitter is beneficial for non-consumer brands but it’s essential to understand your measures and objectives. In fact, a recent study has shown that Twitter is the leading source of social leads for small and medium B2B brands. 82% of leads from a social media platform come from Twitter compared to 9% for Facebook or LinkedIn.
Twitter in partnership with Compete has also surveyed its users and found that those who saw tweets from business-to-business tech brands were more likely to visit a brand’s site than an average Internet user and that Twitter users who saw tweets from B2B tech brands were more likely to search for those companies online. Having come a long way from its humble beginnings, today Twitter has 200 million users, many of whom utilise it as a business tool for connecting with staff, partners and customers in real time.
Twitter offers B2B organisations the opportunity to share, connect, discuss and engage with prospects and existing clients and most importantly it helps increase and enhance brand awareness. In an attempt to understand how its target audience was using Twitter, one of our clients in the B2B sector recently polled some of its customers and discovered that a social media presence would certainly impact their perception of the brand and choice of supplier, even though they might not necessarily engage directly with them as a supplier.
So, to tweet or not to tweet that is the question! While for consumer facing organisations Twitter might be a b-line to their customers, offering the chance for enhanced service, building loyalty and direct communication, the benefits for B2B companies are somewhat greyer and should be viewed with a pragmatic eye – as an integrated part of brand enhancement.
In our next blog on this topic we’ll highlight and discuss some of the communication strategies that B2B companies can employ using Twitter.
