Social Media

A Marketo Secret Sauce Article

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Marketo’s Secret Sauce for Twitter:
The Who, What, When, Why and How of Twitter for B2B Marketers

I hear comments on a regular basis about how useful Marketo’s Secret Sauce for Demand Generation webinar is to marketers.  In this webinar, Jon Miller, VP of Marketing at Marketo, shares how Marketo uses our own marketing automation tool.  This video does not require registration, so customers, prospects, media, and even competitors can see the product and how we actually use it.  Many viewers have watched the webinar multiple times, returning to grab specific tricks for implementation into their own systems.

When I was recently asked about how B2B marketing professionals should use Twitter, I thought I’d take the same approach and share how I use Twitter as a tool to help Marketo. 

What is Twitter?
According to Wikipedia, Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets.  These updates are considered micro because they must contain 140 characters or less.  People who subscribe to your tweets are called followers, and users can see a display of all their followers’ tweets on Twitter or in another application via RSS or SMS.  Everyone is allowed to follow 2000 people.  After that, follow limits are based on the number of people who are following you.  

For us, Twitter is a way to communicate with our customers, prospects, and others interested in our company, our products, B2B marketing and other news we think is interesting.   It allows us to promote new website and blog content, upcoming events, and share content from third parties that may be of interest to B2B marketers. 

Why do we use Twitter?
We often hear of B2C companies like Comcast or Jetblue using Twitter to connect to their customers, but is there really a need for B2B companies to engage in micro-blogging?   I would argue it’s more important for a B2B company to use social media, since often the information they are providing is more technical and harder to obtain than information from well known B2C brands.  By putting this information on social media sites like Twitter, you are allowing your followers to see this information without the distraction of visits to your website or looking for it via search.  It allows followers to stay up-to-date on what is interesting to them.  And it’s completely opt-in, since followers can choose whose messages they see.  This is a type of inbound marketing, allowing B2B companies to communicate with many people at a time, instead of one by one. 

How did we get started?
The first step in to using Twitter is to creating an account.  You will want to get permission from your company to do this prior to starting.  If you are worried about your company being hesitant, give relevant examples, sharing successes of competitors or customers who use the technology.   Explain the cost savings of communicating with many at once, and the importance of sharing company news and information to the community. This especially applies to those that may purchase your product, those that own it, or those that may write about it. 

After creating an account, make a tweet.  Don’t just write about what you are doing, write something you would find interesting if you were reading it.  Then, do this every other time you tweet.  Try to set some goals, like tweeting at least 5 times a day.   Initially, we did not do a good job of this from our corporate account, but we’re learning to do better.  

The next step is to find followers.  You can do this a few different ways, but at first follow those who have written about your product or your industry, then go further by following their followers.  Start with a few, then watch how it grows.   Also, I will sometimes follow competitors or the followers of competitors.  These people are often writing interesting information about my industry that I don’t want to miss. 

Who sends our Tweets and who do we follow?
There isn’t one person solely responsible for tweets from the @Marketo account.  While I handle the majority, Jon and Kelly may occasionally tweet out through the Marketo account, too. 

Marketo follows anyone who follows us.  This is a common practice for businesses as we do not want any of our followers to feel like we are ignoring them.  We try to monitor the tweets of our followers, but miss many because of the volume of followers we have.  We read every direct message and @ response to ensure we are not missing any direct communications and monitor key terms like our name and other terms relevant to our business.  I do this using an application called Twhirl, but have also used Tweetdeck and the Twitter website.  I am going to try using Seesmic soon, too.  You can see a screen shot of how I view Tweets using Twhirl below. 

We do not try to grow our followers using paid service (yes, they exist) or by using technologies to auto-follow.  Instead, we follow those who interact with us, those who follow us, and those who our followers are following.   I have followed people with large follower counts outside the industry or large brands that talk about general topics, because I find it of interest or I want to see what other people are reading.  While some companies feel follower counts are very important, I disagree.  I think a great way to grow your following is to follow a few more people who write about your industry every day. 

I’m not the biggest fan of direct messages, and often find them to be unnecessary ‘noise’.  I also don’t like when they try to act genuine, as if they aren’t sent automatically.  I do not recommend using them from your personal account.  I think they can be useful from a corporate account if you send a response that notifies of a paper you may have on social media or if you want to provide links to other pages you have on social networking sites.   

When do we post on Twitter?
Through the Marketo account we post on Twitter when we are excited about something.  This may mean we tweet a blog post by one of our customers, an upcoming event or webinar, or a message about our product.  These types of tweets are not very personal. They are meant to keep our customers and prospects informed about Marketo news and events, while helping to educate B2B marketers through promotion of interesting and relevant blog articles.

The majority of posts through the @Marketo account occur Monday through Friday, and typically during business hours, because that is when our demographic is often reading our posts.  We know this because we can see how many people are coming to our website by using web analytics. 

Marketo employees are encouraged to post about whatever interests them.   While these may support brand messaging, we want followers to get to know our employees, as together we make up the personality of the brand.   These accounts are much more personal, and topics may vary greatly.  Employee accounts may not follow everyone back, as this is left to the discretion of the employee.  In my personal account I read almost every single tweet that comes through, which means I have to limit the number of people I follow.  This hurts the number of people that follow me, as many people want to be followed back, but I feel like following everyone is a bit fake if I’m not going to read their posts.

What do we search?
People outside of your followers can find your tweets, and the most common way to do this is through Twitter Search.  This functionality allows anyone to search all tweets by keywords so they can find content of interest. 

We use this to see what people are saying about our product, look for interesting B2B marketing topics, monitor our competitors, and see what is interesting to analysts who write about our industry.  It can also be used to track hashtags (explained later in the post). 

We also use search to identify prospects.  We do this by watching for people who are talking about purchasing competitive products or who are talking about demoing functionality that our product has.  I struggle with this sometimes, as I don’t want to be pushing my product on someone that is not interested.   I think this is important though, because some people who would be interested in Marketo may not know it exists.  I try to be careful about the tweets I send to these people, by suggesting information that may useful to them in their search.  In many cases, it’s a blog post that may help solve the problem that prompted them to seek out a marketing automation solution in the first place.

What are Hashtags?
Hashtags were created to add context to tweets.  For example, if you are commenting on a movie you might hashtag the name, i.e. #startrek.  One recent example is a #sds09 hashtag for the sales and marketing conference by SiriusDecisions. 

Marketo uses hashtags during events we attend to allow other attendees to find us.  We know there is debate about the use of hashtags, but we have found success in their use.  Friends have been able to find us this way, and it has allowed us to review our tweet notes from an event.   If the event has a specific twitter account we may use that instead.  You may also catch our employees using a hashtag in a sarcastic way, because sometimes it’s too hard to resist. 

What are tiny URLs? 
The url used by a website is often long, and sometimes wouldn’t even fit in the 140 characters allotted.  Instead, you can use shortened urls that redirect to longer urls to save space.  At Marketo, we use a free shortening service called bit.ly.  I like this service because it allows me to see how many people have clicked through on a link that I have tweeted.

What are the results?
I hope this gives you insight to how we use Twitter.  We have had some great results, including:

• increased number of people that read our blog posts
• customers alerted of new product features and upcoming events
• collected competitive and industry information
• analysts updated on new Marketo information
• introduced our solution to prospects
• shared information during tradeshows or events

It’s important to mention that I learn something new about Twitter regularly, especially new tools that work with the site.  While I have been using Twitter for quite a while, the Marketo account is fairly young, and is just getting started on the important task of representing our brand.  I hope to learn more, and I would love for people to suggest ways (tweet @marketo) that I can improve how I use Twitter.  I would also love to hear about how you use micro-blogging to talk with your B2B customers.