How to use Twitter for socialselling

A word from Social Selling University’s Faculty“Social Selling University is the �rst program to teach salespeople how to use Facebook, Twitter and other social tools to generate ready-to-buy leads and build relationships with customers that result in long-term business growth.” Dan SchwabelFounder of Personal Branding Blog

“Social Selling University levels the playing �eld by teaching sales executives, managers and reps how to interact with and sell to the modern consumer. These social sales practices breed relationships and eliminate the need for cold calling.” Barbara GiamancoPresident at Social Centered Selling LLC

“Salespeople who fail to leverage social media do so at their own peril. The problem is, many don’t know how. Social Selling University is a great place to start and continue learning what’s possible through in the new world of social selling.” Jill KonrathAuthor, Speaker, Sales Strategist at SNAP Selling

The mission of the Social Selling University is to:“Educate sales and marketing professionals on emerging social media best practices for increasing sales and marketing productivity with the ultimate objective of driving revenue.”

Distinguished Members of Social Selling University’s Faculty

Koka Sexton Joanne Black Anneke Seley Kent Gregoire Barbara Giamanco

Learn from the Leaders in Social Selling

Koka SextonFounder of Social Selling University and Director of Social Media Strategy at InsideView.

@kokasexton

Kevin BaldacciProvost of Social Selling University and Social Marketing Strategist at InsideView.

@kevinbaldacci7

A word from Social Selling University’s Faculty“Social Selling University is the �rst program to teach salespeople how to use Facebook, Twitter and other social tools to generate ready-to-buy leads and build relationships with customers that result in long-term business growth.” Dan SchwabelFounder of Personal Branding Blog

“Social Selling University levels the playing �eld by teaching sales executives, managers and reps how to interact with and sell to the modern consumer. These social sales practices breed relationships and eliminate the need for cold calling.” Barbara GiamancoPresident at Social Centered Selling LLC

“Salespeople who fail to leverage social media do so at their own peril. The problem is, many don’t know how. Social Selling University is a great place to start and continue learning what’s possible through in the new world of social selling.” Jill KonrathAuthor, Speaker, Sales Strategist at SNAP Selling

The mission of the Social Selling University is to:“Educate sales and marketing professionals on emerging social media best practices for increasing sales and marketing productivity with the ultimate objective of driving revenue.”

Distinguished Members of Social Selling University’s Faculty

Koka Sexton Joanne Black Anneke Seley Kent Gregoire Barbara Giamanco

http://twitter.com/#!/kokasexton

http://twitter.com/#!/kevinbaldacci7

http://twitter.com/#!/kevinbaldacci7

Table of Contents

I. What is Twitter? What is Twitter? 3 Why Does Twitter Matter to Sales 4 Twitter Terminology 7

II. Building Your Personal Brand – Profile Optimization Creating Your Twitter Handle 12 What Should Go In Your Twitter Bio 12

What Should Your Link Be 13

III. Building Your Community Building Your Community 16 What Do You Put in 140 Characters 17 Build Relationships 18 Leverage Other People’s Twitter Lists 19 The Don’ts of Social Selling with Twitter 20

IV. Targeting and Engaging Your Prospects

How to Effectively Search for Prospects 23 Define and Identify Trigger Events 25 Five Lists You Should Have 30

V. Six Applications to Make Sales More Productive with Twitter VI. Your 5-Week Social Selling with Twitter Game Plan

VII. Twitter for Business Case Studies

I. What is Twitter?

Brian Vellmure - CRM Expert and CEO, Initium LLC/Innovantage @BrianVellmure

“ Today’s digital landscape allows you to leverage structured and unstructured information from a wide variety of sources to discover context and insight about the habits, behaviors, and interests of our buyers, with the goal of creating value for them. ”

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Why Does Twitter Matter to Sales? How do B2B companies enable social selling in an environment with long sales cycles and traditional sales methodologies? To put it bluntly, it’s tough to wrap your mind around making a sale through an awesome tweet. But it’s happened and it’s well documented in the case of IBM, who “uncovered millions of dollars worth of sales leads” and that number is expected to grow. However, you have to realize that Twitter is one piece of a broader selling discipline that makes social media key to any enterprise’s pipeline.

When it comes to sales, timing can be everything. Success requires a specific understanding of your market, organization, and selling strategies. Twitter is an amazing tool for sales people to get proficient with just about every industry that has a following on Twitter. From thought leaders to ordinary people like us, there are hundreds - if not thousands - of profiles on Twitter that can teach you more about your industry.

Using Twitter gives you and your sales teams some great insights into the companies and contacts you target. Never before in the history of sales have sales people had the ability to know so much information about the activities of a prospect. Where they travel, who they hang out with, even as much information as how they are feeling. If nothing else, it will let you decide how you approach them.

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables users to send personal updates of up to 140 characters. These posts are known as “tweets.” It was reported that in February 2012, Twitter had over 140 million users generating over 340 million tweets daily.

To justify their investment in social marketing and sales programs, IBM surveyed over 1,000 global buyers. They found that 1/3 have already used social media to engage with their vendors. Furthermore, they discovered that 75% of their buyers are likely to use social media during the purchase process in the future.As more companies and employees leverage tools like Twitter for communication, you have the opportunity to get a direct line of sight on what’s happening within their worlds. The only thing that allows sales people to understand their customers on this level without becoming friends is social media.

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Your prospects are out there talking online:

Your prospects are out there talking – no matter what time it is





A Wine Salesman and Twitter“When I first started tweeting, I had no brand recognition; no one knew who I was. To build my brand, I started creating conversations around what I cared passionately about: wine. I used Search.Twitter (called Summarize.com back then) to find mentions of Chardonnay. I saw that people had questions, and I answered them. I didn’t post a link to WineLibrary.com and point out that I sold Chardonnay.

If people mentioned that they were drinking Merlot, I gave them my Merlot recommendation, but I didn’t mention that they could buy Merlot on my website. I didn’t try to close too early, like a nineteen-year-old guy; I made sure to invest in the relationship first.

Eventually, people started to see my comments and think, “Oh hey, it’s that Vaynerchuk guy; he knows Chardonnay. Oh cool, he does a wine show – let’s take a look. Hey, he’s funny. I like him; I trust him. And check it out: he sells wine, too. Free shipping? Let’s try a bottle of that.…”That’s what caring first, not selling first, looks like, and that’s how I built my brand.”

- Gary Vaynerchuk, The Thank You Economy





Twitter Terminology1. TweetEach of your Twitter posts or updates is known as a tweet. Some weird people refer to them as “twits,” but the official term is “tweet.” Each tweet has a maximum limit of 140 characters.

2. @ (At)The @ symbol is used to call out usernames in a Tweet, for example: “Great blog post @socialsellingu!”

The “@” symbol is probably the most basic terminology yet still needs to be discussed due to some of its confusion. The biggest confusion comes from where you want to place the @ symbol in your tweet.

Beginning a tweet with “@” – only the recipient and their sharedfollowers can see the tweet

Tweeting with “@” anywhere other than the beginning – ALL of your followers can see the tweet What is a mention? A mention is any Twitter update that contains an @username anywhere in the body of the Tweet. (Yes, this means that @replies are also considered mentions.) If you include more than one person’s name in your Tweet and you use the @username format, all of those people will see the Tweet in their personal Mentions tab. Everyone included in this tweet can see the update.





3. # HashtagThis is probably the most complex Twitter feature for new users to understand. The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages. (ie. #sales, #socialselling, #b2bsales). Sales professionals and companies commonly use hashtags to tweet out content or updates about events. It is also a great tool when a sales professional is going to an event and wants to see who else is talking about the event.

Hashtags: Categorizing Tweets by KeywordPeople use the hashtag symbol # before relevant keywords (no spaces) in their tweet to categorize those tweets and help them show more easily in Twitter Search. Clicking on a hashtagged word in any message shows you all other Tweets in that category.If you tweet with a hashtag on a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your Tweet. Example: If Joe searches for “#socialselling” these are what his results would look like:

4. RT: Retweet Abbreviated as RT, retweet is used on Twitter to show you are tweeting something that was posted by another user. Retweeting is one of the sole drivers of content being massively shared throughout large networks. Many companies measure their Twitter success by how many retweets they receive during a set time period or for a specific piece of content. Retweets measure how sticky your tweets are, and give insight into the identities of your loyal followers.

Use hashtags to search for threads about subjects such as #socialselling.




5. DM: Direct Message A direct message enables you to send a private message (direct message) to a person you follow. This will not show up in your Twitter feed – think of it as a 140-character email.

IMPORTANT You can only Direct Message another user if you are both following each other.

83% of people who complained on Twitter

liked or loved a response by the company.

In February 2012, Twitter had 500 million registered users

In one day, 40 million users visit Twitter

II. Building Your Personal Brand – Profile Optimization

Steve Richards - Co-Founder, Vorsight@srichardv

“ Just like an expert plumber knows how to use his many tools in unique ways to fix the pipes, so must salespeople be trained on how to interpret and use social selling tools to reach the right person with the right message at the right time. ”


Creating Your Twitter HandleIf you haven’t done so already, claim your Twitter name. Your name is your brand so choose wisely. If you are a sales professional, use your First and Last name: @kokasexton, @barbaragiamanco, @paulcastain

Get out there and reserve it! By not reserving your domain name, your personal brand is at risk and you may never be able to reclaim it once you’ve lost it. If it’s taken, go ahead and slightly adjust.

For example, if someone has @joelucas change it to @joe_lucas, @jlucas.

What Photo Should You Use for Your Profile Picture? Research has shown that people trust smiling faces more that they’ve seen multiple times, which is why a photo of your smiling face works best.

According to research found at Duke University, behavioral results showed that the retrieval of face–name associations was more accurate and faster for smiling than neutral faces. So show off that big, beautiful smile of yours.

What Should Go In Your Twitter Bio?Your bio is a total of 160 characters – little more than a tweet. Now is the time to be creative and let people know who you are and why they should be following you.

As a sales professional, here are some suggestions:

• Your Position and Where You Work: if your business has a Twitter profile include that as well

• Your Interests: this is what creates a personality behind your Twitter profile

• HUMOR: throw some humor in there but be professional




http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393208001097


What Should Your Link Be?When you set up your Twitter account, you are given the option to include a link that will show up below your Twitter bio.

There are plenty of options so that part is going to be up to you.

Here are some strong recommendations:

• Your personal blog (if you have one): Show everyone you are a thought leader in your industry

• Your Company’s homepage: If a prospect stumbles upon you, make sure they know who you are work for and what you are sell

• LinkedIn profile: LinkedIn is your personal brand’s homepage. This is where you want to drive prospects so they get a good sense about you and what you sell




III. Building Your Community

Mike Damphousse - CEO, Green Leads@damphoux

“ They (Green Leads sales reps) don’t think about pursuing contacts any more, they are pursuing people. People have histories, lives, and more to them than just phone numbers and email addresses.”

Building Your CommunityEssentially, Twitter is a shorter and more viral form of blogging, so the same rules actually still apply. By constantly writing or tweeting about your expertise on a specific topic, you’ll become known for it, and people will gravitate to you and follow you.

Buyers do not want a sales representative. They want a trusted advisor. How do you become a trusted advisor? You engage and build relationships, not follow everyone under the sun.

Building a relevant Twitter following comes down to three core concepts:

1. Take a firm stance within your industryThis is probably the most essential concept when it comes to social selling with Twitter. As a salesperson, you must find a topic that is relevant to your business or industry and become an expert at it. Twitter users with large followings don’t tweet about their day-to-day activities. They take a stance on one subject and go with it. Fantasy football tweeters have a football following. Social media tweeters have a marketing following. You will also begin to develop a following if you take a firm stance within your industry and establish yourself as an expert. That doesn’t mean you can’t be fun or tweet about a great sandwich you had at lunch. Just make sure you dedicate yourself to a subject that is going to establish your credibility as a trusted advisor in your industry.





2. Tweet content that will interest your targeted audience Are you trying to be relevant to executives, sales and marketing professionals or accountants? Be sure that you create and share content that will speak to them. If they find your updates informative or entertaining then they will follow back or better yet share your tweets with their networks.

3. Engage with your audience

This is where the real magic happens. I’m not going to say that having a robot sending out tweets on your behalf that you can’t grow your following but the number of people you engage with will be what makes gaining 3 followers a day turn into 50 a day. Engagement has a massive effect on growing a twitter following.

What Do You Put In 140 Characters? Content is King

When it comes to Twitter, content is king. Unless you are Lady Gaga, you have to give something to your followers to expect anything back: whitepapers, ebooks, etc.

As discussed earlier, you need to know to whom you are trying to be relevant to. That being said, you need to be yourself and have a personality too. If you are a San Francisco Giants fan and they win the World Series, you should feel free to broadcast your excitement on Twitter. The same is true if you just want to update that you are taking a trip to New York for a friends wedding. Don’t be a robot but maintain a stream of updates that keeps your followers informed on you as well as the content that you want to share.

Where do you find good content to share? That’s a question that gets asked a lot but the answer is right on your desk. The Internet.





All sales professionals looks at the news. Maybe you read the Huffington post or Tech Crunch. Everyday there are stories in your industry that your growing network may not have heard about that you can share. If you find the information relevant then your network might also.

Setup trigger alerts or watchlists on the companies you are targeting. Set up these alerts on the bigger companies in your industry, when they announce something or share something with their network, pass it along to your network.

Build Relationships! Twitter is not a numbers game, nor should it be. A sales professional who brags about having 10,000 followers because he spams them is like yelling from a balcony saying you spoke to the people on the street below. As a sales professional, your goal should be to build relationships. 10 engaged followers are better than 100 uninterested followers.

After finding some people using Twitter in your industry, start engaging with the content they are sharing. Ask questions or maybe just reach out and show your appreciation for what they are spreading around. Listen for people with questions and answer them without giving a sales pitch. It will go a long way in building your credibility as more than just a salesperson.





Leverage Other People’s Twitter Lists A great source for building your community of potential prospects is by following other people’s Twitter lists. If you have a potential prospect who is curating people or companies into a list, subscribe to it!

As long as people make their lists public, you are free to subscribe to them and quickly getting access to dozens or hundreds of vetted Twitter users. This is probably one of the easiest ways to begin following large crowds that are relevant to your prospects.

You should also consider viewing these lists as an opportunity to gain an understanding of what your targeted audiences are looking for. If a prospect has a list name “Social CRM Leaders” or “technology Influencers” you begin to figure out what these people are looking for.

Another tactic you can employ is finding a group of lists that have some great influencers and then creating your own list with these people. Send out a few updates to people letting them know you created this list and see how many subscribe to it.





The DON’TS of Social Selling with Twitter Twitter can be a phenomenal tool used to engage and build relationships with potential prospects. However, you must be very careful not to damage your reputation or hurt your company’s image due to a moment of stupidity on Twitter. Remember, your words are written in ink.

DON’T Feed the Trolls

The term “troll” comes from Scott Stratten in his book: UnMarketing. Here is the exact definition he gives in his book:

“In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.” As you become more active on Twitter and the Internet, there is no doubt you will be running into “Trolls.” If someone bashes your company or a person you know, do NOT give him or her the attention they crave by replying back. It can be catastrophic to your reputation and your company’s image.

DON’T Use “Twitter Machines” or SPAM via Direct Message If you’re thinking about spending money on a “Twitter Machine” that gives you 10,000 followers, DON’T. Social selling is about engaging and building relationships, not buying friends. If you believe 10,000 followers will give you the sales you need, then you are missing the entire point of using social media for sales.

One of the most common methods of these Twitter Machines is sending automated direct messages. Automated direct messages are quickly becoming the SPAM of Twitter. By using these, you are quickly gathering the wrong following. Use direct messages to exchange personal information such as a phone number of email address.





DON’T Be Stupid Like everything else on the Internet, everything you write on Twitter is written in ink. Be smart about what you write and assume everyone is watching what you say. Here is a great example of a person who failed to think before they tweeted:

Upon receiving a position at Cisco, 22-year old Connor R. tweeted this infamous message.

It wasn’t long before Tim L., a “channel partner advocate” for Cisco Alert, shared this open response: “Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.”

In other words, be smart about what you post on Twitter.




IV. Targeting and Engaging with your Prospects

Jim Keenan - CEO & Founder, Socially Booked @keenan

“ Leads are no longer just second and third party referrals or first party re quests. A lead today can be a complaint on Twitter, a question on LinkedIn, or a discussion on a Facebook page. ”


How to Effectively Search for Prospects Sitting around on Twitter hoping prospects will land in your lap is a path all too many try and take. Use Twitter’s search and advanced search feature to find potential prospects and engage with them.

Identify Keywords Today’s buyers are web and social media savvy, they are informed about your offering – and your competitors’ – and they are starting the sales process without you. Not only that, they are talking about their business!

Here is where you should start putting the search tool to work. Start by identifying broad keywords and start narrowing your audience down. Find the prospects that are out there looking for your solution. InsideView’s social team discovered hot keywords from their targeted audience by looking for people talking about “#sales.” The problem was, #sales became washed with companies and people talking about sales or deals primarily for consumers. The team adjusted and began to look for people talking about “#B2Bsales,” significantly narrowing down their options.

Know who your targeted audience is and what they are talking about.

#B2B SALES

#SALES

SOCIAL SELLING TIP Finding your prospects takes time and effort. Finding a keyword that they are commonly talking about is not going to come after 1 or 2 hours of looking. Keep adjusting.





Define and Identify Trigger Events Did your prospect or customer just acquire a company? Maybe they just released a new product. Whatever the news is, share it with the world. Your prospects will appreciate you for spreading the news.

Maybe you are in hunter mode and looking for new leads. You should know, with some form of regularity, who uses Twitter at your target companies. Maybe the decision-maker with whom you are trying to connect with is using Twitter on a regular basis. If you see some news about their company, send them a tweet. For example:





Sales trigger events may include:

• Management Changes• Mergers and Acquisitions• Social Networking/marketing comments• New Partnerships• Funding or Financing• Expansions or Relocations

Up to the minute, proactive information about your target companies will turn a cold contact into a warmer lead, therefore speeding up and enhancing the sales cycle and leading to more pipeline and more sales. (The buzz phrase for this is to “speed up sales velocity.”

By leveraging InsideView’s watchlists, you will have countless trigger events at your disposal to share




http://learnmore.insideview.com/Social_Selling_University.html


Utilizing Twitter Lists

Creating a list

1. Navigate to your Lists page through the profile drop-down menu in the top navigation bar.

2. Click Create list

3. Enter the name of your list, a short description, and whether you want the list to be private (only accessible to you) or public (anyone can subscribe to or follow the list).

4. Click Save list.





Twitter lists are the hidden secrets of the social selling world. Lists curate all of your potential prospects into one feed so you can see and hear everything they voice.

Any company making the shift towards becoming a social business should be collecting the social profiles of their customers and prospects. Scratch that, every company BETTER BE collecting social profiles for their customers and prospects.

Most companies are not doing this so it’s up to sales people to do some of the lifting for Marketing and show them how it’s done. This

is how you can easily create Twitter lists for your selling efforts:

Steps on Building and Using an Effective List of Potential Prospects: 1. Use InsideView! It’s the only application that can target people

with a sales focus. Choose your search criteria and produce results.

2. Do an Advanced Search on Twitter to find people that have the title you are looking for in their Twitter Bio. It’s not a perfect science but it will help.






3. Once you have the Twitter profiles you want to add to the list, create the list in Twitter. Let’s call it “Prospects.”

4. Now the fun starts – begin adding people to the Prospect list When visiting a contact’s profile, click on the menu, add to list and add them to the private prospect list.

There are many ways to use lists in Twitter. Some sales people have specific lists to a company they are working with. This way, they can funnel all updates from the company and the people in the company that are posting on Twitter. This information gives you some insights to what’s happening in the organization and can alert you to any changes they experience.





5 Lists You Should Have 1. Companies in your industry What companies are in your industry and to whom are they talking to? The people with whom they engage with could be your best prospects.

2. Competitors Measure your social efforts by seeing to whom your competitors are talking to and if you are also in the conversation. 70% of businesses ignore complaints on Twitter. Be there to clean up the mess!

3. Potential Prospects Find people talking about your industry and add them to your list. Monitor them on a daily basis and look for those trigger events, or begin engaging with them. This is a great way to engage with a prospect without worrying about getting through the gatekeeper or cold calling.

4. Partners Partners that work with the same target audience often share similar needs and questions. Follow your partners and interact with them. The more these partners see and interact with you, the more likely they’ll remember you when their customers and prospects have a need you can fill.

5. Customers Engage with your customers! One of the best ways to find your prospects is by looking in the same space as the your customers. If your customer has a connection to the people to whom they are talking to, even better! Ask for an introduction.




75% of buyers will likely use social media in the purchase process IBM surveyed over 1,000 global buyers.

They found that 1/3 have already used social media to engage with their vendors.

65% of a sales representative’s time is spent not selling – social selling can help

The Social Selling Revolution

Sales professionals need to learn from the leaders in social selling

SOCIAL SELLING UNIVERSITY Buyer behavior has changed. By the time you reach your customers, they probably already know more about you than you know about them. Today’s buyers are web and social media savvy, they are informed about your offering and your competitors and they are starting the sales process without you.

V. Six Applications to Make Sales More Productive with Twitter

Alex Shootman - Chief Revenue Officer, Eloqua@shootman

“ Just a couple of months ago one of our sales people was on TweetDeck and noticed a person really struggling with a competitive offering to ours. The rep reached out, helped the person with their issue, and then began to build a relationship. We took out a competitor from that account within the last few weeks.”


Six Applications to Make Sales More Productive with Twitter Twitter is a fantastic social media for sales tool, as it can work wonders for lead generation and even sales productivity. Yet, as great as Twitter is, it can also take up a shocking amount of time, especially if you are going to use it for business. That means you simply must be efficient. Let’s take a brief look at 6 smart tools that will help you use Twitter in a more productive fashion.

Sprout Social allows businesses to efficiently and effectively manage and grow their social presence across multiple channels and turn social connections into loyal customers.

The web application integrates with Twitter and other networks where consumers are engaging with businesses and brands. In addition to communication tools, Sprout Social offers contact management, competitive insight, lead generation, reporting, analytics and more – all in a package that’s intuitive and easy to use. One of the most notable features is the ability to compare with competitors. Comparison will show the number of daily mentions, percentage of engagements, and also the ability to see who’s talking to them.

Overall, it is a great, intuitive and affordable product. This would be recommended for users who have a firm understanding of Twitter and what metrics they are looking for.

1.




http://www.sproutsocial.com


Tweetdeck is a product of Twitter created to offer users flexibility within the application. You can arrange various feeds, and if you have multiple accounts, you can schedule and manage those Tweets via Tweetdeck. This is a desktop app that is all about showing you the info you need in a convenient structure, and it even works for smartphones. “One of the reasons why I love Tweetdeck is because I can set up keywords that I want to receive tweets on. I can have topics, I can have industries and hashtags. I can even keep tabs on my competitors. It would absolutely blow your mind what kind of complete disclosure people are willing to offer in these venues.” Paul Castain, The Sales Playbook Overall, TweetDeck has the most user-friendly update process with one account. However, more than two accounts will make a mess of your TweetDeck dashboard. Especially if you are monitoring hashtags, lists and searches, as well as general account activity. Tweetdeck is recommended for users who are just getting started and want to manage one account.

Want to manage multiple accounts across different devices? Seesmic has you covered! This great Twitter tool integrates with 3rd parties like Salesforce Chatter and LinkedIn and Stocktwits. Overall, it’s a great tool with color scheme options, rounded edges, better spacing around columns and less clutter across the top of the dashboard to make Seesmic more pleasant to use. The biggest flaw is that it lacks features like tabs and analytics, which would make it a more robust option.

Overall, Seesmic may be overwhelming for beginners. Packed with options and features, the tool is most commonly used be Social Media Managers to control multiple accounts and social media services.

2. 3.




http://www.tweetdeck.com

http://www.seesmic.com


Once the preferred app of the “Mac Twitterati,” Twitterrific has seen brighter days on your desktop (meanwhile the iPhone app is certainly an impressive option). As it stands, Twitterrific is hardly an improvement on the Twitter.com web experience. One of the biggest issues involves not being able to view videos, photos or links that are posted on your timeline.

Twitterific has fallen behind their competitors in terms of ease of use and features, however remains a solid platform for beginners.

Hootsuite is a handy Twitter tool that works well for business applications. Further, it works on iPads, iPhones and smartphones. Companies like Fox, Time and NBA use Hootsuite and have thus given it a stamp of approval. Hootsuite offers convenience, as you can manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and even Wordpress and Foursquare profiles! But it gets better, as you can even manage multiple profiles as well and use Hootsuite for keyword monitoring too.

Currently, Hootsuite remains as one of the most popular social media applications holding an ever growing following of 4 million users. Overall, the tool can be used at any experience level. Hootsuite is great for beginners because of its intuitive platform and multiple features.

4. 5.




http://twitterrific.com/

http://hootsuite.com/


Over the last decade, InsideView has established themselves as the leader in sales intelligence and social selling. In Spring 2012, InsideView updated their social media feature allowing sales professionals to view corporate Facebook pages, Twitter profiles and Blogs. Empowered with list building features, a 360° degree industry analysis and a consolidation of social media platforms, this tool gives sales professionals the ability to effectively apply social selling in their sales cycle. Users can now monitor and interact with their prospects, through social media, all under one roof.

InsideView is great for all levels of experience. It is intuitive for beginners or can be also used in advanced social selling for experienced sales reps.

6.





VI. Your 5-Week Social Selling with Twitter Game Plan

David Brock - President and CEO, Partners in EXCELLENCE@davidabrock

“Social media has been an important part of a number of sales, but has never been the exclusive component. Last year, close to 70% of our net new name business originated through some sort of social media contact – but none of it closed through a single channel or through social media exclusively.”


Your 5-Week Social Selling Game Plan The issue with most sales professionals and social selling is the struggle to set up a game plan that is effective and adheres to their schedule. Many will go all out for the first week or two and give up after not seeing any leads come in through their pipeline. Social selling is not a race, it is a marathon. Like any diet or conditioning workout, you need a plan.

Whether you’re just getting started with social selling and Twitter or you want to brush up on the basics, this Social Selling game plan can serve as your essential guide to becoming an effective B2B salesperson using social selling.

Not only is this plan effective, it adheres to a sales professional’s schedule. By taking only 10-20 minutes out of your day over a 5-week period, you will build a solid social selling foundation and drive hot prospects into your pipeline. Remember, what you put into this game plan is what you will get out of it.





Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

Week 1 Set up your Twitter accountCreate your profile picture

and write your Twitter Summary

Start searching the keywords of your industry

Build List #1 of influencers in your industry– add 5 people

to itStart following 10-20 people

Week 2Pull up List #1 of industry

influencers and begin chatting with them

Search your keywords again and begin engaging and

answering questions

Find and bookmark 2 or 3 blogs or websites that fit your

industry

Build List #2 of 10 Partner Companies

Raise the number of people and companies you follow to

30-50 people

Week 3Pull up List #2 of Partner

Companies and congratulate them on recent successes

Tweet 5-10 times today: articles from your blogs,

congratulations to companies or engage with influencers

Build List #1 and #2 to 20 members in each list – start engaging with the members

Build List #3 of 10 Prospective Companies –

make it private


50-70 people

Week 4Pull up List #3 and begin

engaging with prospective companies

Pull up all of the people following you and begin asking them questions

Build all of your lists and tweet 10+ times

Build List #4 of 10 Potential Prospects (people) – make it

private


70-90 people

Week 5Choose a Twitter Application that works for you – Sprout

Social, Hootsuite, etc.

Start saving specific hashtags, keywords and lists

Pull up List #4 through your new Twitter Application and begin engaging with

your potential prospects – ask questions, tweet them

content

Build List #5 of 10 Competitors – make it private

Raise the number of people and companies you are

following to 100+

Social Selling University - 5 Week Game Plan for Twitter





VII. Twitter for Business Case Studies

Craig Robertson - CEO, ecycler.com

“We were reaching people when they wanted to be reached, when they want to have a conversation – not when we wanted to have a conversation.”





ecycler.com Uses Social Selling with Twitter to Eliminate Cold Calling

ecycler.com, founded in 2009, is an Internet-age spin-off of the cash-for-cans concept. Rooted in the belief that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, the site connects recycling discarders with collectors for mutual benefit. As an early startup, ecycler’s had a weak marketing

budget and their targeted audience was very specific: discarders and collectors.

“We spent a lot of time cold calling or direct emailing,” said Craig Robertson, co-founder and CEO of ecycler.com. “We would catch people when they were busy and they didn’t want to talk to us.” The founders decided to take on a new approach: build awareness among businesses and individuals through social media – mainly Twitter.

“We were reaching people when they wanted to be reached, when they want to have a conversation – not when we wanted to have a conversation,” says Robertson.

Social Selling Results from ecycler.com• On average, the company lands one meeting per week with potential partners, collectors or discarders through Twitter

• In a 3-month challenge, ecycler.com added 151 collectors and 623 discarders.

• ecycler.com regularly receives coverage from relevant bloggers by meeting them first on Twitter.





Why Doctors are Tweeting During Surgery

This case study goes way back to the early developments of Twitter and social media. Dr. Joel Wallskog, an orthopedic surgeon at Aurora Health Care in Milwaukee, used Live Tweeting while conducting orthopedic surgery.

“I think it’s a unique opportunity to explore innovative ways to communicate with patients and alleviative fears they may have about joint-replacement surgery,” said Dr. Wallskog. People were allowed to watch surgery live and could tweet questions to surgeons. What exactly is the takeaway here? By tweeting successful operations and answering questions, Dr. Wallskog established himself as a trusted advisor and expert in his field. Rather than tweeting “Hey check out Aurora Health Care,” he established as the person to approach about these difficult medical procedures. As a result, the leads began to come to him.

It’s no wonder this Wisconsin hospital and HootSuite customer is seeing a 15% conversion from lead to customer using live Tweeting during orthopedic surgery.




Take Social Selling with Twitter to the nextlevel and use a tool that brings ALL of the selling elements together onto one platform

During the last few years, over a thousand InsideView customers have adopted Social Selling and are now seeing:

Higher qualified lead volumes

Increased opportunity conversion rates

Higher than average contract volumes

Higher renewal rates

Download InsideView FREE and put your social selling skills to the test

http://www.insideview.com/free-edition


The mission of the Social Selling University (SSU) is to educate sales and marketing professionals on emerging social media best practices for increasing sales and marketing productivity – with the ultimate objective of driving revenue.

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Technology

How to use Twitter for socialselling