Social Media Marketing | B2Bbloggers.com

Two of the most common questions asked when some begins using Twitter are, “Who should I follow? and “What should I look for when doing so?”

There are a couple of schools of thought on the answer and it ties directly to what your goals are with your account. Some focus on growing the follower number as high as possible as quickly as possible. Others focus on building a targeted community of like minded people, associations, and brands – with the goal being more focused on the quality of the list versus the quantity of followers.

For me, I take a combined approach – find and follow as many people, brands, associations etc. as possible that share common interests, feelings, situations and experiences with me and that align with the buyer personas I have for Make Good Media and B2Bbloggers.com. It is a very systematic and careful approach to who I follow with both of my Twitter accounts – @B2Bbloggers and @jeremyvictor. Why? Because I have a specific purpose defined for each account. So in this article, as my aim has been with all of our Twitter for Business related posts thus far, I am sharing a how-to.

The 7 factors to consider before you follow someone on Twitter.

1. Tweets

The tweets of the Twitter account are going to reveal the most important information about the account (person or brand) and will likely have the highest impact on your decision. I suggest at the very least you should review the first page of tweets that are displayed. Here are some things to look for when making your decision to follow:

Are the tweets topical, interesting, and relevant to your interests and your Twitter account?
The amount of tweets that are “noise” or random, non-specific thoughts. Now, realize every account on Twitter is going to have its share of “noise.” It’s inherent in the nature of the medium, you’ll need to determine your tolerance level for it.
The number of tweets that are broadcasts versus conversational.
The number of tweets that are promotional.

2. Background, Profile And Link

Most users of Twitter take advantage of the 160 character BIO to describe themselves and the nature of their tweets. Twitter also allows users to provide one link to anywhere on the web. This could be to a blog, a LinkedIn profile, a corporate website, a book for sale … you name it. If need be, take a minute and check it out, you’re bound to learn more to help you with your decision. And finally, many accounts utilize the background image to share even more information. Be sure to check there too

3. Followers

First thing to look at is the number of followers. Don’t let it be the sole discretionary factor in your decision.

The 7 factors to consider before you follow someone on Twitter.

Pop-Up Window By Hovering Over Username

While it does give you a sense of the accounts influence within the network, it tells you nothing about the type or topic of the account.

Next take a quick look at a couple pages of the account’s followers, do you have common interests? With the new @anywhere platform, you can hover over Twitter names to reveal the account’s bio for quick look. This can give you a sense of the types of people that are following the account you are assessing.

Do you share common interests with them? Also when you first get to the page, if your accounts have followers in common, you will see “following” next to the name.

4. Lists

Twitter lists provide uses the ability to organize and categorize groups of Twitter accounts any way that they would like. Every user’s Twitter page displays the number of lists an account is a member of. By clicking the number, you can see the lists the account is on, but more importantly you can see the “names” of the lists. This is yet another quick way to see how other members of Twitter are describing and categorizing the account.

5. Favorites

Did you know that Twitter allows you to favorite tweets? Yep,that’s right, in the case of my favorite tweets, I use them as bookmarks so I can go back later to read the content. So what does that tell you about me? Exactly, things I like, and things I am likely to tweet about. Simply more information to help the decision making process.

6. Follower To Following Ratio

When an account is following thousands of people and is in the teens for followers, that’s a BIG warning sign and I don’t recommend following these accounts.

But what do you do in the case when, the ratio is not so drastic – say following 1,400 and is in the 300s for followers. Make recommendation is to take pause, and further assess the content of the tweets, tweet volume, etc. Many people (in their thirst for knowledge) may spend a lot of time early on following lots of people … and suddenly realize whoa, no one is following me back. Just in these cases when the tweet volume is low (i.e. a newer account), don’t be too quick to not follow. Look at the other information a bit closer and decide from there.

[Sidenote: Do I sound like I speak from experience? Yep, that was me, in my thirst for knowledge, when I first joined Twitter I think I was following 500 people in a few days – lesson learned and now shared with you.]

7. Tweet To Follower Ratio

You are bound to get followed by an account who has sent 4 Tweets and has 14,321 followers. Honestly, I don’t know how or why or what these accounts are, but I don’t follow them and usually I block them from following me.

Click To Follow Me @Twitter

Phew –

That is a lot of information to review, digest, and assimilate just to decide whether or not to hit the Follow button.

But the fact of the matter is you are inviting someone into your stream? And your intention is to have them return the follow. Why not be prudent? Right?

You tell me though, did I go too far? Are you thinking, uh, all it takes is a second to unfollow someone, why bother with all this? It is certainly a reasonable thought – let me know what you think below. I’d be interested in the dialogue. Oh and tell me too – what am I missing?

twitter_t_logo_outline Over the past couple of months as we’ve been working with clients at Make Good Media, we noticed a social media trend I thought I would share. It has to do with Twitter. As an active, daily user of Twitter, it is fairly easy to overlook this trend. But repeatedly, we’ve heard the following, “At first, Twitter is really hard to understand, quite confusing, and frankly I don’t get it.” Some have even gone so far as to say, “I’m ready to give up.”

Now as someone who is very active on Twitter, and knows all the ins and outs, this can come as a quite a surprise. It’s not until you sit down with someone, begin going through it, and say statements like, “That’s a DM.” Or “You see this, that is a ‘mention.’ To reply to that, you just type in the at symbol followed by their username.” Pretty quickly you realize you are almost speaking a foreign language, and there are several things that need to be learned for someone to really grasp the basics of Twitter.

This is a rather big obstacle and it’s getting in the way of many b2b marketers. I’d even go so far as to say at this point it is impacting the rate of adoption of Twitter for B2B marketing. Couple the difficulty of learning the basics of Twitter with the fact for the 1,000s of times we see statements like, “Start engaging on Twitter” or “Build Your Followers,” (the more advanced topics) very rarely are they supported with the HOW to do those things.

We’re left with a growing number of frustrated marketers who are beginning to question the value and benefits of Twitter before ever really getting started. All because the initial learning curve is fairly steep. Factor in the life of a busy executive and the B2B marketers dilemma, and you almost wonder if they’re not wrong in their thinking to throw in the towel.

While I can empathize, my advice remains, stay the Twitter course. Sending a 140 character message should be simple enough, however, it takes time to learn the language, how to use the site, and the etiquette of Twitter. The key thing to remember is if you’ve determined that your customers and prospects are using Twitter, then so shall you.

To help in the coming weeks we plan to write several Twitter “How To” articles that address the basics and beyond of Twitter for business to business marketing. With this as our definition of Twitter:

Twitter is a social networking/micro-blogging utility that enables people to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of brief (max. 140 characters) messages, known as “tweets.” Twitter offers the opportunity to share information and build relationships with people of the industries you serve. It also has great potential for traffic generation — by driving people to interesting content on your blog or website — for loyalty and branding building — by interacting with and influencing people and for discovering and sharing information real-time information.

We plan to focus on four areas:

What the heck is Twitter and how do I use the site anyway?
- From the simple definitions of friends and followers to the more advanced topics of Hashtags, Twitter chats, and how to use public and private lists.
Community Building
- Effective practices to grow a B2B community on Twitter, including where and how to look for the right people, what to assess when deciding to follow them, and guidance on tweeting – topics, frequency, context etc.
Conversing and engaging
- Once you find the right people, how do begin and sustain lasting business relationships through conversations and engagement on Twitter. (Hint: it involves a lot more than Twitter, like the phone and real-life meetings.)
Twitter Tools and Applications
- There are 100′s of 3rd party Twitter Tools available and Twitter has plans to build additional applications as well. We’ll cover them and point you to well done posts and reviews.

So stay tuned, join in, and if you have a refreshing, new perspective of Twitter for B2B marketing, then by all means consider writing for us, and together let’s lower the barrier to the B2B adoption of Twitter.

A final editorial note: Over the past several months Twitter for B2B marketing did not make the cut when we were conducting our editorial planning. It was very deliberate and intentional. Our view was that it was being covered. But as time passed, we noticed a void. We believe we’ve found a way to take a fresh look at Twitter for business that is centered in education and helping B2B marketers discover it usefulness for their marketing efforts.

Now your assignment, in the comments tell us, What Makes Twitter So Hard To Understand?

Yes, I am talking to you – a quick, two minute assignment. Kindly go to the comments, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when I ask, What Makes Twitter So Hard To Understand? Thanks for your time, we’ll incorporate your responses into our editorial coverage.