There’s a lot your business can achieve in 140 characters. These 5 quick case studies exemplify social media marketing at its most unique and effective, and demonstrate that B2B businesses can leverage Twitter with stunning success.

1. Constant Contact

It’s easy to treat social media as a one-sided marketing exercise, and a platform for your branded messages. However, as Constant Contact realizes, the real value of SMM lies in its ability to facilitate discussion between a business and its potential customers.

In addition to a constant stream of targeted, valuable content, the brand excels in engaging their audience with Q&As, opinion pieces, and conversation starters—providing a platform for their audience, as well as their brand. Given that Constant Contact helps SMEs to grow meaningful customer relationships, their Twitter feed is an awesome case study in their own expertise and services.

2. General Electric

General Electric isn’t afraid to diverge from tweeting about brand ethos and product lines, and regularly engage their community with quirky competitions and less-than-serious social sharing. 2012’s #IWanttoInvent celebrations saw GE ask their audience for crazy invention ideas, before turning their tweets over to a team of pro designers (my personal favorite: Droid Dog Walker). Their recent EmojiScience campaign continues the trend of fun over function, creating a community that’s genuinely enjoyable to be involved in.

GE also excels in nurturing niche micro-communities, like their aviation-focused #AVGeeks follower-base. By sharing super-specific content, with a super-select group of followers, the brand drives truly passionate engagement—and whilst #AVGeeks will never have the same reach as their regular Twitter content, I can guarantee it has a much higher click-through and conversion rate.

3. Buffer

I’ve previously featured Buffer’s epic long-form content, and showcased their unbelievably honest approach to content marketing. Their super actionable content forms the heart of their Twitter presence, with their feed reading like a How-to guide for effective social media marketing.

There’s virtually nothing in the way of brand promotion or self-indulgence—and the only Buffer-specific content you’ll come across are their frequent case studies into Buffer’s own social media wins and losses. Their approach is undeniably popular; despite offering a single product, maintained by a small team, they have 264,000 followers and growing.

4. GoToMeeting

Content creation is the engine that drives social media—but it shouldn’t be the only tool deployed in your brand’s social marketing strategy. The sharing of relevant third-party content (known as content curation) is essential for positioning your brand as a helpful, customer-centric business, and the go-to resource for a particular industry.

GoToMeeting understand this, filling their Twitter feed with awesome actionable content from both parent-company Citrix and other industry-relevant sources. The end result is a Twitter community that puts education above promotion, and in the process, endears almost 50,000 followers to the brand.

5. Maersk

Financial services, hardware manufacturing, and stock transportation are important, sure, but they aren’t sexy. Consumers will never get excited about B2B products in the same way they would a sports car or luxury fashion brand; and I’d wager that exactly 0 people had cloud networking solutions at the top of their holiday wishlists.

Despite this, global shipping company Maersk has a stunning 112,000 Twitter followers. Instead of sharing content in the vein of 5 Best Practices of Stock Handling, they’ve decided to populate their feed with stunning HD images of their fleet traveling to remote and beautiful corners of the world. With incredible sunsets and beautiful seascapes, this bit of lateral thinking has transformed a potentially yawn-inducing Twitter feed into a unique perspective on a surprisingly interesting brand.