The business-to-business world is divided into two camps:  those who see Twitter as a waste of time and those who get value from it.  A recent elaborate cyber-ruse highlighted the real opportunities for getting complex messages to your market in easy 140 character soundbites.

Jurgen Habermas, an 80-year-old German philosopher, seemed an unlikely advocate for Twitter.  Stuart Jefferies, The Guardian reported

“At 5.38pm on 29 January, the German social theorist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas apparently tweeted the following: "It's true that the internet has reactivated the grass-roots of an egalitarian public sphere of writers and readers." At 5.40, he tweeted again: "It also counter¬balances the deficits from the impersonal and asymmetrical character of broadcasting insofar as . . ." At 5.41: ". . . it reintroduces deliberative elements in communication. Besides that, it can undermine the censorship of authoritarian regimes . . ." At 5.44: "But the rise of millions of fragmented discussions across the world tends instead to lead to fragmentation of audiences into isolated publics."

When he appeared to join the twitterati it ‘sent the philosophy blogosphere into a frenzy of speculation’ as to whether Twitter Habermas was authentic?  http://tinyurl.com/yzrtr92.

Now the authenticity of whether or not it really was him was not the issue for me.  What caught my eye was the complex message ‘he’ managed to get across in just four tweets delivered in quick succession between 5.38pm and 5.44pm – and that he quickly attracted over 7,000 philosophy followers – a targetted audience.

One of the main reasons the B2B community are divided about the value of Twitter is the notion that tweets are too small to be able to communicate anything useful.  But when the ‘pros and cons of the internet as a force for increased democracy’ can be outlined in just 560 characters, it suggests to me that there is no message too complex for this medium.

So how could you implement this tactic into your marketing activities?  To get the results you need, as with all marketing, you need a plan.  At Marketing2Business we recommend that you:

1. Start with a clear idea of what you want to communicate and to what effect?  Do you want to reinforce key brand messages, provide information about a new product/ service, or even communicate details of a recent new project win? 

2. Then think about how you can tell the whole story in a few, crystal clear words. Remember it must grab the attention and be of value to the reader.

3. When you have achieved this consider how to divide the story into a number of 140 character soundbites without it losing its impact.

4. If you want people viewing your tweets to be able to link back to more information on your website just copy and paste the url of the relevant web page into a link shortener such as www.bit.ly or www.tiny.url and then include the shortened url in your tweet.

Sure it will take some time to get it right (call in the professionals if necessary) but worth it to enhance the reputation of your company - and cost-effective so will not incur the angst of the FD!

What could you be tweeting which would inform, educate or interest your clients or potential clients?