Everyone talks about how great social media is to broadcast your voice to the world!  In the old days you needed to own a newspaper or radio station to speak to lots of people and so social media has opened this ability to talk to lots of people to everyone. 

However, when it comes to B2B marketing do you really want to talk to everyone?

The answer is probably “no”.  You simply want to talk to those people who:

1. Are buying from you (customers)
2. Might buy from you (potential customers)
3. Influence others to buy or tell people about you (key influencers in your industry and journalists)

So to talk to them you need to have a think about where these people are.  If your customers and potential customers are not on Twitter then do not try and talk to them through Twitter.  If the journalists and key influencers are on Twitter then do talk to them through Twitter (and vice versa). It’s kind of obvious, but I work with lots of organisations who simply “do social media” because they think they have to.

For many of these organisations, they only want to talk to maybe 1,000 people in their sector, maybe even just 50 people - and often the best way to target these people in B2B marketing is through an email newsletter and possibly very targeted LinkedIn groups.  If you can write and share content on a regular basis that is useful and helps another busy professional do their job better then you can start to become a trusted source and be seen as an expert in your niche.  And people like to do business with experts.