Okay all you business-to-business marketers. B2Bs, if you will. It’s time to get real for a minute. Dim the lights. 

Twitter is a wonderful thing. All kinds of great things happen on there every day. I don’t have to tell you. You already know. The trick is you have to tame the Twitter beast. If you can do that, it’s like the Wild West for opportunities. That is, if you’re selling a product or service to consumers.

B2B, that’s a different story.

Why is B2B marketing on Twitter difficult? Well, why did you sign up for Twitter? To give other marketers another channel to reach you in? If so, please, please put that in the comments below. You are like the golden calf of marketing and we all wish to gaze upon you. 

No, you signed up for Twitter so you could engage potential clients. Plant your flag and spread your message. That was the reason I’ve used Twitter for past projects. But for B2B that’s a tough row to hoe, because the businesses you’re hoping to connect with are on Twitter for the same reason you are. They’re following you because they want you to follow them. They follow you back because they’re hoping they’re making a possible sales connection, or because they’re afraid to lose you as a follower if they don’t. You both pitch each other but neither of you are listening.  It’s a sea of beggars begging from beggars. 

So this time around I signed up for Twitter to keep my finger on the pulse of what’s new in social media technology and tools. Some people are following me, and I’m following some of them back. I think I’ve got over 20 connections now on my @MikeRBeck account. Why so few? Thanks to Hootsuite and some great search streams I’ve set up, I can accomplish my goals on Twitter without having to go on the hunt for connections.

Scoff if you like. But the truth is, the people I really want to connect with are the people crucial to my business survival. And those people don’t use Twitter. Yet. 

I’m talking about your average small business owner. I’m talking about the men and women who drive the backbone of our economy. The people who are busy focusing on providing great service and products, rather than making Twitter accounts so they can patiently await every tweet I send.

Those are the people I want to connect with. And I’m doing it by having dinner at their restaurant, buying coffee from their coffee shop, buying birthday cards at their gift shop, and then saying hello. They’re handing me a receipt and I’m handing them a business card. It works.

Social media is the future, no doubt. But it takes a human connection to get my target audience into the system first.