“I don’t get twitter- why is it relevant to me, SaaS and B2B in general?”

photo credit: kaila davis is gone till jan.

I’ve been talking to quite a few people in the SaaS business recently who don’t “get” twitter and social media in general and I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

The key concept behind twitter and other forms of social media is that it is an open way of communicating between people. I took to twitter long before blogging because I find it a lot easier to write 140 characters than 800 word posts. You can post from your mobile device. You can link to good stuff on the net. You can connect with people.

Who cares? Run a b2b company and think twitter isn’t relevant to business customers? I think you’re wrong! Here’s why:

I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but the world of software is changing. Buyers are changing how they buy software- they are better informed about your software and the competition. People blog about you, there are online communities where users showcase your worst issues- you can’t control your brand anymore.

But underlying this shift is the paradigm that Data is now free- attention is not. That’s why freemium is so important in SaaS, giving away a small amount of value in order to gain the buyers attention. But buyers are craving analysis from people they trust. Data is everywhere- trust isn’t. Where does the trust come from? One great source is relationships built on social media…

OK- enough of the social media meets freemium babble- how is social media, and twitter in particular going to help your business?

Imagine you could listen in on what a prospect is asking others about your product and your competitors. With twitter, you can. It’s a global listening tool.

So step 1- start using http://search.twitter.com to find out who’s talking about you. Even better, click on the RSS feed icon in the top right to get updates whenever someone tweets your keyword.

Step 2- follow interesting people using your RSS reader by navigating to their twitter page and adding their feed in the right sidebar (underneath the pictures of who they follow). I follow my favourite people like this so I don’t miss their tweets. A really good SaaS person is Lincoln Murphy and his RSS feed. I’m here and my RSS feed.

If you’re not using RSS then I highly recommend Google Reader….

Let’s put it into action- as many of you know- I’m a SaaS and cloud specialist with an interest in product management. I’ve been consulting but there’s nothing as satisfying as being part of a team rather than a consultant, so I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a full time gig. Being in technology, there’s no better place to find a job than online. Where do we naturally turn? Google of course. Like with my tweets, I use RSS to get searches automatically fed to me so I don’t miss anything.

I’m searching Google for “SaaS product manager” and “Cloud product manager” and got 10 results for SaaS, 17 for cloud in the last 24 hours and none were relevant. Twitter on the other hand hasn’t sent me anything today but yesterday returned 3 results for SaaS, 2 of which were relevant. Today twitter has returned 1 result for Cloud, which is relevant and yesterday returned 3 results- all the same job but relevant.

Since twitter is giving me so much more relevant results and much less volume than Google I’m thinking of ditching my Google saved searches.

Just think how better informed you could be if you were using twitter, even before you get into the benefits of engaging with your customers and building trust. This is a powerful presentation worth watching:

Presentation by Socialnomics.

And finally- the analytics god Avinash on analysing twitter.