Published on the 08/09/2011 | Written by Tom Skotidas

There is no doubting Twitter’s massive growth worldwide. Almost everyone knows of Twitter, millions use it, and thousands are hopelessly addicted to it…

The micro-blogging network has done an amazing job in growing its numbers, including among business professionals.

It has also done an amazing job in branding itself as an information distribution channel helped in no small way by the headlines that celebrity tweets grab on a daily basis. So it is not surprising that the statements: “Twitter is a great channel for PR” or “It’s perfect for getting your message out there” are the frequently quoted benefits.

But it has never positioned itself as a useful channel for B2B lead generation.

And therein lies the problem for B2B marketers and sales professionals – a lack of trust that Twitter can deliver sales leads for them.

This distrust is compounded further by another major concern of the B2B professional – the random Twitter follower.

Random followers
If you own a Twitter account then you know what I am referring to.

We all have random followers who offer little to no “buyer” value for our products or services. You might have noticed this after every tweet – you get four new followers, three of which are from a foreign country while the 4th seems to be a consumer who likes to “hang out and meet new people”.

For most B2B professionals on Twitter, this randomness often represents the majority of their fledgling follower bases – and undermines their perceived value of the channel.

What we need is a practical way to create a paradigm shift.

Sculpting your followers to reflect your target market
The key to any B2B professional’s heart is showing them a channel that can help them identify and access their target audience, efficiently and effectively.

On Twitter, identifying and accessing your target B2B audience requires lots of research and engagement with prospects, which can be time consuming. I am going to focus on one tactic that is relatively quick and easy, and has helped me build a relevant follower base that is approx. 60 per cent composed of my target audience.

This approach is called Follow Your Prospects.

Follow your prospects. Get your prospects to follow you. 
Basically, there is an unwritten rule within Twitter: if I follow you, you should follow me back.

Reciprocal follow rates are around 10% – 15%. It’s a small percentage, yes, but it can be very valuable to you.

Why? If you’re in, say, IT sales and follow 300 CIOs, CEOs, and IT Journalists, within one week you should find yourself with 30 – 45 followers from among this esteemed pool of prospects.

Suddenly, every tweet matters.

Especially if you use a URL within your tweets to prompt your CIO followers to click through to a landing page that converts a high per cent of browsers into leads for your sales team.

Where do I find prospects to follow?
There are several tools on the market that allow you to search through Twitter for prospects based on their self-reported information in their bios, however one of the easier to use is FollowerWonk [www.followerwonk.com].

I have used this tool quite a bit over the last year to sculpt my follower base.

Simply enter your prospects’ job titles and location, and run a search to identity your prospects.

Say you are a B2B marketer or sales professional focused on IT professionals within New Zealand and Australia. You can run the following search:

This search yielded 104 results. This means there are 104 Twitter users who have stated in the Location field that they live in New Zealand or Australia, and have listed the keywords “CIO”, “Head of IT”, “IT Manager”, or “IT Director” in their bios.

You can now click through to each user’s actual Twitter account, and decide whether to follow them. Within one week of your follow campaign, you should notice a stream of reciprocal follows from this group.

Note: when entering search phrases of two or more words, always use parentheses and quotation marks to enclose the search phrase. Separate each search phrase with the |symbol to indicate the “OR” option.

Parting tips
If you want to maximize the percentage of reciprocal follows from your target audience, here are some tips that have proven successful for me:

• Make your Twitter Bio more relevant to your target audience. Don’t talk about your love of muffins or music or Twitter. Talk to your prospects and tell them what you can do for them;
• Improve your Twitter Pic. Ensure it is professional and inspires your prospect to follow you back;
• Use a relevant landing page in the Twitter URL field. Many of your prospects will decide whether or not to follow you based on the information contained within the landing page your Twitter account sends them to.Follow the advice above and you should experience a surge in followers from within your target market, more qualified click-throughs, and a new lead generation channel that pleases the CEO.

ABOUT TOM SKOTIDAS//

Tom is founder and director of Skotidas, the first agency in Asia Pacific to specialise in B2B Social Media Lead Generation.www.skotidas.com.au