{"id":502,"date":"2010-04-25T16:46:55","date_gmt":"2010-04-25T16:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/?p=502"},"modified":"2010-04-25T16:48:10","modified_gmt":"2010-04-25T16:48:10","slug":"a-problem-affecting-twitter%e2%80%99s-b2b-marketing-adoption-it-ain%e2%80%99t-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/a-problem-affecting-twitter%e2%80%99s-b2b-marketing-adoption-it-ain%e2%80%99t-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"A Problem Affecting Twitter\u2019s B2B Marketing Adoption (It Ain\u2019t Easy)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Over the past couple of months as we\u2019ve been working with clients at Make Good Media<\/a>, 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\u2019ve heard the following, \u201cAt first, Twitter is really hard to understand, quite confusing, and frankly I don\u2019t get it.\u201d Some have even gone so far as to say, \u201cI\u2019m ready to give up.\u201d
\n


\n

\nNow as someone who is very active on Twitter, and knows all the ins and outs, this can come as a quite a surprise. It\u2019s not until you sit down with someone, begin going through it, and say statements like, \u201cThat\u2019s a DM.\u201d Or \u201cYou see this, that is a \u2018mention.\u2019 To reply to that, you just type in the at symbol followed by their username.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

This is a rather big obstacle and it\u2019s getting in the way of many b2b marketers. I\u2019d 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, \u201cStart engaging on Twitter\u201d or \u201cBuild Your Followers,\u201d (the more advanced topics) very rarely are they supported with the HOW to do those things.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re 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<\/a>, and you almost wonder if they\u2019re not wrong in their thinking to throw in the towel.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve determined that your customers and prospects are using Twitter, then so shall you.<\/p>\n

To help in the coming weeks we plan to write several Twitter \u201cHow To\u201d articles that address the basics and beyond of Twitter for business to business marketing. With this as our definition of Twitter:<\/p>\n

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 \u201ctweets.\u201d 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 \u2014 by driving people to interesting content on your blog or website \u2014 for loyalty and branding building \u2014 by interacting with and influencing people and for discovering and sharing information real-time information.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We plan to focus on four areas:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What the heck is Twitter and how do I use the site anyway?<\/strong>
    \nFrom the simple definitions of friends and followers to the more advanced topics of Hashtags, Twitter chats, and how to use public and private lists.<\/li>\n
  2. Community Building<\/strong>
    \nEffective 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 \u2013 topics, frequency, context etc.<\/li>\n
  3. Conversing and engaging<\/strong>
    \nOnce 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.)<\/li>\n
  4. Twitter Tools and Applications<\/strong>
    \nThere are 100\u2019s of     3rd party Twitter Tools<\/a> available and Twitter has plans to build additional applications as well. We\u2019ll cover them and point you to well done posts and reviews.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    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\u2019s lower the barrier to the B2B adoption of Twitter.<\/p>\n

    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\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

    Now your assignment, in the comments tell us, What Makes Twitter So Hard To Understand?
    \n<\/strong>
    \nYes, I am talking to you \u2013 a quick, two minute assignment. Kindly go to the comments, what\u2019s the first thing that comes to mind when I ask, What Makes Twitter So Hard To Understand?<\/strong> Thanks for your time, we\u2019ll incorporate your responses into our editorial coverage.<\/p>\n

    Jeremy Victor
    \n    B2Bbloggers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Over the past couple of months as we\u2019ve 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\u2019ve heard the following, \u201cAt … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,173],"tags":[138,57,324,323,325,244],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-jeremyvictor","tag-adoption","tag-b2b-marketing","tag-difficult","tag-problems","tag-tool","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":524,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions\/524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}