Posted By Industrial Web Solutions Marketing Team on July 15, 2010

In my last post, Twitter’s Advertising Platform: Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends, I provide readers with an overview of Twitter’s new services for advertisers. Although the new ad program doesn’t appear to be open to everyone right now, (I could find no link to Advertising Programs on Twitter.com and no link to a sign up in any of the news articles), I would like to share with you, the industrial marketer, an approach to Twitter and its new ad services that may get you better results overall.

Industrial manufacturers and resellers are the biggest industrial users of Twitter right now. Unfortunately, they are using it too often as a “flyer” to promote what they offer. The power of Twitter lies in your ability to engage your target audience groups in a conversation about topics important to them. “One off” tweets that do not generate discussion are tantamount to two four year olds engaged in a parallel conversation where statements are made but nothing comes of them: “I have a race car. Look.” The other four year old looks and says, “I had cake for lunch.” Both pieces of shared information are soon forgotten. You get the idea.

So what do you do now? Here’re some ideas:

Identify a topic of importance to your target audience group. Ways you can do that:

• Ask your sales team to relate concerns raised by customers.
• Read the trade news for issues that concern them.
• Read their company news for issues that concern them.
• Select a topic from your company news about something you offer or have introduced that helps their business to do better.

Make a list of possible Tweets. Imagine how the conversation online might go and prepare thoughts and responses in advance. It may not go the way you plan but you will have thought about it and researched it thoroughly so you will be prepared to guide the conversation more effectively.

If you haven’t done so already, invite customers to Follow you. If you really want to spark interest and build your Followers, announce the discussions you have begun on your home page, in an email, or some place you know you can reach your target audience groups effectively. Learn how to integrate Twitter into your site here.

Start tweeting, beginning with the most provocative tweet designed to get the conversation going. Keep tweeting on the same topic with your participants so that it makes it to the Trending List (seen in the right column on Twitter).

If your efforts are working but you still haven’t made it to the Trending List, sign up for a Twitter ad campaign once the ad service becomes available to everyone (I’ll let you know so keep checking back). Select keywords that will structure your campaign around the relevance of your established topic.

To support your ad campaign, select from your existing tweets relevant messages that will be promoted during the campaign. Simply click on any of your tweets that are already an organic part of Twitter to make them a Promoted Tweet.

Users who are not yet Following you can learn about your topic from related hashtags in their own timelines or by searching relevant terms that have to do with your topic. Once a user interacts with your Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends they can opt to Follow you, Retweet it, or Reply.

Twitter’s Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends can also be used effectively with regard to trade show or other sales and promotional event appearances or sponsorships your company is planning. One final point, remember to closely monitor, measure, evaluate and make adjustments as needed to ensure the best results.

While you are waiting for Twitter to invite everyone to start advertising on their ad platform, adjust your approach to how you tweet and what you tweet about. Whether it’s a policy issue, a new product your introducing, or an upcoming trade show you will be participating in, actively engage your target audience groups about what interests them. Twitter can be an effective channel to keep your company name in the thoughts of your existing and potential customers by demonstrating your knowledge of and interest in topics important to them.

Additionally, I encourage you to communicate with Twitter at this time about the specific needs of the industrial business to business (B2B) marketer. Typically last to embrace new media technologies, industrial marketers are not generally considered during development phases of ad platforms so their unique needs are seldom addressed. By voicing your requirements now, you may avoid having to conform to a system that was designed to meet the needs of business to consumer (B2C) enterprises.

Categories: brand management, content targeting, industrial marketing, industrial search engines, manufacturing, mobile web marketing, networking, online marketing, professional networking, search network, social networking, Technology
Tags: advertising on Twitter, industrial manufacturers on Twitter, industrial marketers on Twitter, industrial marketing, Promoted Trends, Promoted Tweets