How to Use Twitter for B2B lead generation

Twitter can be a powerful tool for building new relationships, managing existing ones and providing customer service. It's great for monitoring what people are saying about your business, creating a buzz around upcoming events and establishing contacts with bloggers and journalists for potential PR placement. But Twitter can also be a great B2B lead generation channel.

Sharing great content via Twitter will drive traffic to your website, giving you an opportunity to convert those visitors into leads and ultimately nurture those leads into customers.

Getting started with lead generation on Twitter

Make sure your profile is branded and optimised. Once your Twitter profile is complete, you'll want to create opportunities to gain new followers by ensuring each of your web properties - your website, blog and other social profiles - is linked with your Twitter account.

At the very least, place a Twitter follow button on your website homepage, your 'About Us' page and in the sidebar of your blog homepage. For even more exposure, add a link to the Twitter account in your email signature and include it in the 'About' section of your other social profiles.

First, focus on creating useful content (blog posts, ebooks, infographics and presentations) that your audience will find valuable. If you don't create content aimed at solving problems for your audience, you'll have nothing interesting to share on Twitter and you won't generate any leads!

The key to generating leads on Twitter is to post a variety of content. A good rule of thumb is to use 80 or 90% of your tweets to share great content that your audience will love, and push a more direct sell with the other ten to 20%.

Try incorporating an image into every third or fourth tweet. This will ensure they appear more prominently in a user's feed and on your company's profile page.

Finally, it's important to create tracking URLs so you can measure the clicks and leads your content generates.  As with any B2B lead generation activity - test, measure and refine your efforts so you can constantly improve the quality of your offering.

This blog was originally published in January 2015 and has been updated where possible for accuracy and comprehensiveness in June 2017.