B2B Influencer Q&A: "Twitter gives ADP a powerful competitive advantage"

ADP, Inc. (@ADP) provides cloud-based business process solutions to about 620,000 organizations in more than 125 countries. As the company’s Director of Social Media, Chelsea Marti helped ADP become a first mover on Twitter in the HR industry. We asked her to share lessons learned about using Twitter to drive B2B thought leadership and leads.

@TwitterAds: Why is ADP on Twitter?

@chelseamarti: A few years ago, we recognized the need to broaden the brand story beyond just payroll services to include human capital management. Twitter has been one of the top levers we’ve leaned on in that journey as a brand.

Providing value to our followers through Twitter gives us a powerful competitive advantage that increases thought leadership, awareness and engagement. We’ve aligned our social efforts to web and offline events marketing to maximize the collective impact of integration.

@TwitterAds: Share some examples of how you’ve integrated Twitter.

@chelseamarti: Conferences and tradeshows are strong lead generators in the B2B industry, and create a great “point in time” where experts and influencers of all kinds are interacting both online and offline. ADP leverages the online buzz at big industry events like the HR Technology Conference (#HRTechConf) and connects subject matter experts to a broader HR industry conversation on Twitter.

ADP is rife with experts of all kinds — on everything from mobile HR technology to talent management and benefits administration. So we have a lot of previously unlocked value to add to industry conversations online.

With the ADP Social Ambassadors program, the company is able to elevate the voices of our employees on Twitter. We were able to humanize thought leaders and their subject-matter expertise simply by giving them the right tools to do what they do best in a new way.

One Tweet with a quote from ADP Social Ambassador Jen Cozier (@JenCozier), who works on ADP’s Talent Management Product Management team, was one of our highest performing Tweets at the #HRTechConf. It drove an off-the-chart engagement rate of 6% – significantly outperforming HR category benchmarks.

Twitter Ads: What other kinds of content have you found perform best with your B2B audience?

@chelseamarti: Twitter is a great place to give an extended life to thought leadership materials like in-depth research and whitepapers. Snippets from the ADP Research Institute® have been social media gold for us on Twitter. The Institute combines ADP’s worldwide expertise in the workplace with a deep, fundamental approach to identifying and analyzing the trends that shape the working world.

Repurposing insights, stats or quotes from studies unlocks amazing engagement with Twitter users. Another important note: We take full advantage of the visual opportunity on Twitter. We create social distribution assets such as images and infographics to increase interest in the information we share.

We’re also doing more than one-way communication on Twitter. ADP listens to what people are talking about on Twitter to optimize how we position our message and engage with the crowd. Our followers and potential new followers tell us exactly what types of insight they want from ADP experts as part of that organic conversation.

Twitter Ads: How do you measure the value of Twitter?

@chelseamarti: Twitter is one of ADP’s top-performing social channels. In addition, LinkedIn is a natural fit for ADP because it’s attractive to a business audience looking for insights to help them improve their companies or get better at their jobs. But Twitter is where we go to get real awareness, buzz and brand excitement.

One of the most valuable things about Twitter for ADP is that we can see real-time engagement and tap into our own experts to provide insights pretty rapidly. At events, Twitter’s power for ADP is unmatched. Newer capabilities like interest and keyword targeting also let ADP reach people at the right moment. More than any other platform, Twitter lets us move quickly and optimize in real time.

Twitter Ads: What’s ahead for ADP on Twitter?

@chelseamarti: ADP is focused on getting ahead of the intersection between social and mobile specifically. The data is clear: Business decision makers are using multiple screens. So we test what resonates most with mobile versus desktop Twitter users.

In general, ADP wants to continue to be out there having real-time, two-way conversations. We want to connect with the people that say great things about us and humanize our brand by responding. We want to be where people don’t expect a big brand like us to be; that’s why we’re on Twitter.