Twitter for B2B: You have how many followers?

Wow, 26 thousand followers! You must be so popular!

Using twitter for B2B marketing purposes is different from the typical B2C stuff you read about on the Web. Since you’re not selling products or services to Mr. and Mrs. Anybody, the quantity of followers you have is less important than in B2C, however the quality of your followers is much more important.

At a marketing convention I recently attended, a really hyper person from a Montreal based B2C marketing agency that shall remain nameless made fun of the fact that I only have about a 100 followers on Twitter. He had 26,000.

His biggest client is a local Chewing Gum company. He told me that with one tweet he can drive 2000 people his client’s Web site. Which is all well and good. It’s typical B2C as usual.

When I got home that evening, I did some research and went on his client’s Website. And that’s when I began to laugh. The Website was devoid of landing pages, devoid of content, there was basically nothing to do and nothing to read.

His quantity of followers means nothing by itself, nor does his capacity to drive traffic for his client in this case. The purpose is to generate revenue for a client, not to show him analytics of Web traffic increases. It’s a little like bringing 2000 lactose intolerant people to a milk bar. It’s all well and good that the bar is now full, it looks good on the outside, but if no one is buying milk, it serves no real purpose.
Integration is the Key

What my popular B2C marketing friend did wrong was not integrating Twitter marketing into his client’s overall marketing strategy. Integration is the key to success not Twitter by itself. It all works together, Twitter, a content based online strategy, a strong offline strategy, research, PR, and so forth. It doesn’t matter how good of an engine you have if your car is on blocks.

If you want to get started the right way, give me a call. In B2B, it’s not a question of quantity; it’s a question of quality.