6 Steps to Find your B2B Audience on Twitter
Mon, May 10, 2010
We all know Twitter is a great tool for connecting and sharing information. But using it to find the right audience for your business can be a bit difficult, especially in the B2B environment. So how do you go about finding this elusive crowd? Here’s several options using both Twitter search and third party tools to help you find and follow meaningful connections.
1. Determine your keywords and key phrases
If you already have a list, you’re ready to start. If not, go to Google Adwords Keyword Tool, enter in a couple of your main keywords and gather a list of keyword ideas. Include your products, services, industry terms, competitive keywords and anything else that will match you with your potential audience.
After you have your keywords, here’s how to proceed:
2. Search in Twitter by keyword
a. Go to Twitter Advanced Search and search on your keywords and phrases.
b. Do the obvious- review the results and follow anyone interesting.
But then take it a step further:
c. Use the RSS Feed of the results and subscribe to it in Google Reader. Continue to monitor the feed for other interesting people to follow. Then use this feed of information to your advantage to…
3. Optimize your tweets for inbound opportunities
a. In Google Reader, select your Twitter search feed and click the “show details” link at the top right above your feed entries. Note the time of day and day of the week where the most activity is taking place for that keyword/phrase.
b. Write tweets with those keywords/phrases in the copy and schedule them to be delivered at the most popular times (use HootSuite or some other Twitter tool with tweet-scheduling capabilities). This should help you generate interest not only on Twitter but it may also have additional traditional SEO benefits.
c. Write tweets using your keywords as hashtags and send those at the most popular times too. In general, using hashtags consistently will help you connect with those interested in similar topics.
4. Use Buzzom to search Twitter Bios
a. Visit Buzzom.com. Login with your Twitter account and leave the default “Bio” boxed checked under the search field.
b. Search on a keyword or phrase. Or better yet, search for a position or title of a person that usually buys your products or services. Use quotes for an exact phrase match (i.e. “Customer Service Manager”).
c. Review and follow those in the returned results. You can also bulk follow by selecting ALL.
5. Use Twellow.com to search Business Categories
a. Go to Twellow.com and create an account.
b. Search by category and follow.
c. While you’re there, create your own profile and add it to appropriate categories so others can find you.
d. Also try Twellow’s Suggested Users feature to find possible matches.
6. Search and follow by Hashtag
a. Go to Blastfollow.com. BlastFollow enables you to follow Twitter users en masse.
b. Enter in the hashtag of an event, keyword, keyphrase, etc. and click the “GetUsers!” button for a tally of users mentioning that hashtag.
c. Enter your Twitter Name and Password to follow everyone who tweeted that hashtag. Note that as soon as you enter your information and click “Blast!” you’ll immediately start following everyone who tweeted that hashtag. This tool is especially awesome if you are at an event with a unique hashtag. If you are worried about following people you may not want to, go to Twitter advanced search, search by hashtag there and review/follow those listed in the results.
This is by no means a comprehensive list and based on the number of Twitter tools out there I’m sure there’s other options that perform these same functions. But hopefully these steps will provide opportunities for you to find your audience on Twitter. If you have any other methods please feel free to share them in the comments.
Adam Q. Holden-Bache is the CEO/Managing Director of Mass Transmit, an Internet Marketing Agency specializing in email marketing, web development and social media marketing. Follow Adam on Twitter @adamholdenbache.
Tags: Twitter, twitter search
Subscribe in your favorite Reader
I guess I’m a little wary of any advice that includes the phrase “follow Twitter users en masse.” This might be fine for an MLM scam or if you want to build an account to pawn on eBay but I don’t think this is an effective way to build a legitimate, targeted audience. I liked the rest of your tips, though.
Mark-
Thanks for your feedback. Regarding the following en masse, the tool can definitely be used to build non-legitimate lists, but can help you connect with a targeted audience too. For example, the Marketing Profs B2B conference was held last week. You could search that event hashtag (#mpb2b) and get a list of everyone who tweeted that hash. So if you’re a B2B marketing solutions provider or if you just want to connect with people that share similar interests, that could be a fantastic audience for you.
I definitely would not recommend it for generic hashtags, but for very targeted, specific ones or events its definitely worth considering. And if you have reservations, running a Twitter hashtag search and following manually is always an option.
- Adam
Awesome tips! This is the 2nd place where I’ve heard about the Twitter/RSS feed tip (the 1st was a HubSpot webinar). That’s a little gem right there all by itself. Keep up the good work!
Adam, there’s a step missing here for B2B companies who rely on a CRM and multi-channel marketing to engage their communities.
Full disclosure, I’m with NetProspex: we crowd-source + verify business contact information.
I wanted to let you (and your audience) know that we’ve teamed up with Rapleaf to allow our B2B customers to map their customer and prospect databases to social media.
It’s like the bridge between finding these people on Twitter, and having the right details for them in your CRM like company name, email address, industry, etc.
We’ve just published a piece in iMedia about taking the first steps in social marketing, and the importance of mapping your customers to social media to understand the landscape.
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/BlogDetail.aspx?BlogID=1378
Don’t mean to move the conversation away from your tips, they are excellent! I feel that the hesitation of many B2B marketers towards social media is due to the difficulty in measurement, and the inability to tie a relevant social media audience to a CRM platform.
Looking forward to your thoughts!
Great tips. Really wish all these tools would use OATH for authentication. Really not a fan of sites that don’t use that.
TweetAdder is a another tool to look at as well to BlastFollow.
@mikedmerrill
Katie- thanks for the feedback. Although the article was intended to help those find new audience, making sure you have social media details on your existing customer database (or prospects) is a great point. Those contacts will likely be even more valuable due to your existing relationship. B2B marketers should definitely consider appending their customer profiles with social media or offline contact details, and we’re glad to know that NetProspex and Rapleaf have options available to provide that service.
This is succinct and a great summary. For me, twitter may be the most powerful B2B marketing tool of all. This also underscores the principle that every online strategy begins with your keywords. If you don’t know what you do, and why you do it, and who you do it for expressed through keywords – you’re not ready to start!
thanks again for the great information
Hi,
I represent InRev Systems and we are the owner of Buzzom.com which is one the most loved Twitter app and has more than 1.5 million monthly page views.
I am very thankful for your blog coverage of our service in your blog sometime back. Hence, I am writing to update some of the new offerings of Buzzom.
We have released the lifetime offer for Buzzom Premium at $99 today. Since your blog talks about technology and social media and has a large
readership, we were hoping you would want to cover this news. Buzzom Premium was launched a few
months back and is already about to reach a thousand subscribers. Buzzom
Premium is a complete solution for social media marketing campaign and
is much more feature rich than any of its competitors.
We really hope you would cover us in your blog.
Please view our press release here.
http://www.buzzom.com/blog/?p=678
Regards
Deep Sherchan