How to Increase Engagement on Twitter in One Easy Step

Twitter has announced that it is adding image previews!

As with all social media platforms, twitter is adding more rich media to it's feed.  Instead of having to expand tweets to see media, Twitter has now announced a new feature where media that can be viewed directly in the stream without clicking to view.

Sometimes we forget that Twitter is more than 140 characters, but it's beneficial to increase our use of rich media on Twitter.

On social media platforms, posts with rich media have significantly higher engagement metrics than text-only posts.  On Twitter, this could equate to more retweets, shares, favorites and mentions.

This is not an excuse to get media happy - you don't need to include graphics and video in every tweet just as you don't need to post photos and videos every time you update your Facebook status.  What it does mean, is that a strategic use of rich media in your Twitter strategy can be very beneficial in amplifying your message and getting your brand more recognition.

Don't Let Loyalty Breed Complacency

Too often marketing professionals brag about brand loyalty without defining what loyalty means.

Seth Godin brought up the Two kinds of loyalty in one of his blogs this week.  

Seth makes a strong argument that the loyalty we're all striving for is the identity loyalty which comes from satisfied customers.  This loyalty makes clients ambassadors of your brand and these clients are so committed to your relationship they identify themselves as a patron of your product or service.  These are people who aren't even tempted to shop around for another vendor.  Examples of this kind of brand loyalty are Apple, Nike or (to a lesser degree) Lululemon.  

Unfortunately, too often we mistake loyalty of convenience for identity loyalty.  I might even argue that in our busy professional lives, we consider loyalty of convenience "good enough" and get back to the grind stone rather than perfect our marketing mix.  Why do we let second tier loyalty breed complacency?  Because it's difficult to obtain identity loyalty.

Identity marketing doesn't just mean the marketing team is doing their job, it means the brand is delivering.  If the customer service department drops the ball or the installation team makes a mistake, it's going to affect brand loyalty.  And so much of the sales cycle is out of the marketing team's hands.  When all that you do is vulnerable to the effort of others, it's tough to remain motivated.  

How to Choose the Right Social Media for B2B Marketing

So your company wants to start a social media marketing program, that's great.  Have you thought about which platforms you'll include?  The order that you'll launch them?

It's not as easy as drawing straws, there should be a method to your madness.

The best social network for B2B marketing depends on the following factors:

1. The audience of the social site

2. Your target audience

3. Type of content on the social site

4. The purpose of the social site

5. The tone of the social site

Read an in-depth analysis of each of the leading social media networks to evaluate their features and suitability here.

LinkedIn Takes A Village

LinkedIn is the one social media platform you need to get your whole company behind.  Everything else can be handled by one person if necessary, but LinkedIn is most successful if you have several experts engaged on behalf of your brand.

When you have multiple employees on board, you can divide and conquer the most influential groups within your industry.  Each person can do their best to respond to questions and prove the value of the brand for a few hours each week.  

Every person posting insightful, thought provoking content exponentially increases the perceived professionalism and credibility of the brand.

For this reason, LinkedIn in the social media platform that needs a team of employees supporting it and implementing the strategy.

B2B and B2C Digital Marketing

I dream of working on the B2C side of marketing some day.  I would love to engage with fans who are emotionally invested in a brand and act as ambassadors and evangelists. 

A huge portion of the social media strategy I studied during my training was based on B2C marketing, which is thought to be more successful and more profitable than B2C social media marketing.  For this reason, many businesses and marketers shy away from B2B social media.

B2B marketing is actually pretty neat.  I rarely have irate clients posting hateful messages on our social media platforms and there is a lot less engagement with our fan base in general making it much easier to manage the customer service part of social media marketing.  And the engagement I do see is very positive and insightful since I am posting thought provoking industry information and not photos of puppies and kittens.

I approach B2B marketing much the same way I approach B2C marketing - provide worthwhile, useful content to people who are interested in the same products, services, lifestyle, etc. as our target audience.

The major difference from B2C marketing, is that I see less impact when I offer discounts and purchase incentives.  I'm not saying those things are impossible, I just have to reach out to business owners and clients to make those offers worthwhile and not all of my fans business owners let alone clients.  

  

Difficult Clients

I have never voluntarily ended a business relationship with a client because they were too difficult from a project management standpoint.

I have heard stories that separating and discarding bad clients from your CRM, you will be able to focus more time and energy on maintaining the good clients that you have.

Seth Godin has some experience in this arena so I invite you to check out his blog post, Unreasonable Clients, to hear his story.