Everyone who knows me knows I think Twitter is great! I love it! It’s a fantastically easy way to network, contact, ask questions and so on. But I have always believed that it has benefited our industry more and more as the amount of people and companies on the social network increase. This week I had evidence of this.

Thanks to Twitter, we have made contact with two great companies, offering two very unique products that we didn’t have in our portfolio in the first place. The first (composite door) company, I contacted on Twitter. The request to see one of their reps was passed on straight away and was told when we were going to be contacted to arrange a date that was convenient. The rep rang us Monday, and came the day after!

On that same day, a guy from Evolution came in and dropped a sample off of their window. I came in from a lead, it caught my eye straight away. They guy left a card and said he knew I was on Twitter. So, I logged in, found him, arranged a time to meet (again on the Tuesday) and low and behold, things progressed from there! As it happened, the day after Chris from Evolution came to see us, a client walked in and asked for something that looked really old fashioned! Luckily he left the sample with us!

Since then, we have used both companies since we saw them last and both companies can now consider us as accounts. I can 100% honestly say that without Twitter we probably would have not made progress with either of these companies. Certainly not as quick as we have. So thanks to social media, these two business now have an extra client in us.

This is a story that I hope and think is being replicated all over the country in our industry. Because of the ease of Twitter, and how simple it is to contact a member of staff or a company, more and more B2B contacts are being made. I can also see conversations about orders being openly discussed on Twitter, which is great to see. The social media platform has now allowed our industry to interact in a very positive and efficient way. Before, our industry used to be all about phone calls and faxes. Now social media and emails mean we can create new business and interact in a much more productive way.

What I would like to know from you guys if any of you have made new business contacts through Twitter, if you have gone on to use your new business contacts, if you have found the experience of using them good and if you will continue to use your new business contacts on a regular basis.