By now most businesses know that presence on Twitter is likely to boost their brand awareness amongst the audience and create a platform for interactive engagement.
That being said, when does communication on Twitter become truly rewarding? It is great to create and build a huge follower base; but this follower base should yield relevant business leads.
Given Twitter’s limited character messaging feature, it sometimes poses a challenge to acquire rewarding leads. However, there are several fantastic avenues to generate leads using Twitter; here are some of the tested ways of generating leads especially if you are a B2B company.
#1 Incorporate Twitter Ads
Of course, this is one of the best ways to generate leads! A Twitter ad campaign is similar to one on other social media platforms, and is quite easy to incorporate. For lead generation, Twitter offers a specific campaign, wherein you select your advertising tools, create desired content, define audience parameters using hard and soft metrics, and set your campaign budget. Remember to supplement your paid campaign with regular brand tweets to leverage organic reach. Finally, use the Campaigns Dashboard to measure and monitor your campaign’s effectiveness against planned goals.
#2 Leverage Twitter Lead Generation Cards
Twitter’s Lead Generation Cards, the most direct way to collect leads from your Twitter base, is a part of Twitter’s paid campaign service. Unlike website cards that are created based on site data, Twitter Lead Generation Cards can be customized according to your requirements and placed in the ad section of Twitter. The card has incorporated within it a direct call-to-action and a form wherein users can input their email addresses; therefore your audience can offer their contact data without having to fill out a separate form or leave Twitter. Often, Twitter cards are accompanied with irresistible offers for potential clients or customers such as giveaways, samples, exclusive membership offers and so on, to encourage them to submit their details. These leads can even be integrated into your existing CRM System.
#3 Build and grow targeted audience
When it comes to generating leads, it is important to build a base of followers who truly care about your brand and its offerings. A clever way to create such a base is to follow relevant users who display interest in your domain, products and offerings. Look for profiles that are similar to yours, and have expressed their involvement in niche areas via their Twitter biography. You can also conduct a search through tweets using brand-relevant or industry-relevant hashtags, mentions and keywords to weed out unrelated content.
#4 Offer valuable content for free
Every follower should be able to connect with your product or service. As soon as someone follows your account, offer them a valuable piece of content for free, like an e-Book, a downloadable how-to guide etc. Once they land up on your web page to download the free stuff, you can put that contact into your lead nurturing program.
#5 Become a conversationalist
Connecting with your target audience offers a human touch to your brand, making you more relatable. Keep an eye out for brand or keyword mentions to easily track relevant conversations and respond; you can use tools such as Sprout Social or Hashtagify.me. You can also use advanced search options to identify users and tweets based on location or tweet sentiment. Respond in a timely manner to tweets and mentions about your brand, particularly if they include negative statements.
#6 Cross promote other networks
In the B2B segment, Twitter works very well with LinkedIn as a cross promotional tool. Many people consume long form content on LinkedIn and have better opportunities to evaluate you and your brand on LinkedIn. So provide them the link to connect with them on LinkedIn. Many companies provide LinkedIn contact in the auto-responder message to their new followers and pursue the contact via LinkedIn messages.
#7 Tweet to promote, without overselling it!
Twitter thrives on content sharing, and so does your audience. When it comes to lead generation, brands tend to go overboard and bombard their followers with promotional content – this is a big no-no! Instead, adopt a proportionate blend of content types to get your message across. When posting tweets, as a general rule, opt for 30% own content, 60% curated content, and limit promotional content to just 10%.
It is important to balance your paid campaigns with organic content to reach the right profiles, who have the potential to become clients for your business.
