Okay. Today we're talking Twitter and specifically how does Twitter benefit
business. Now, I'll be upfront. I am NOT the guy to come to to learn about
Twitter but Michelle is. Not the guy but the gal, the person, the expert. So stick
around. Alright. So, let's lay the foundation here. You've got some
credibility with Twitter. How many how many Twitter followers do you have? -We
have 307,000 followers on our startup princess
channel. -And you've actually got a few... A few different Twitter, it that right?
That's your big one. So, over 300,000. -I mean, it's not like
I'm celebrity status. But for a small business, it's pretty great.
-I don't know how many I... Might be like 50. 10? -Great. -10 people are hearing from you.
-They're not actually. Because I don't... I don't tweet. So, I'm excited to do this
video really just to kind of... Because it's something that I still don't
understand. We mean, we've chatted about it before. But I want to get into I say
the phrase nitty-gritty. I said it, a few times today. Because I don't enjoy
Twitter. And I don't know why. Because I know you love Twitter. Talk to me about
first of all why you love Twitter? -Okay, before I do, I need to say like this is
like social media anonymous. Like I hate Twitter. It's okay.
Like I don't believe that every, every business has to be on every social media
platform. I do believe that it's okay for you to pick your favorites and to play
powerfully there and I would much rather business owners choose one or two places
and go deep than be in 8 different outlets and not do any of them any
justice. So, it is okay for it not to be your primary medium? That said any chance
I get I'm happy to tell people why I love Twitter. And first and foremost is
that Twitter is the best right now. And this could change in time. But still, over
the last decade is the best for links. So, where Facebook and Instagram and some of
the others are really not link friendly and they don't want you to post links
and they will lower that in the algorithm,
doesn't affect in Twitter at the same amount. Which means that Twitter, my
second point on why I love this is bringing me the most traffic to my
websites. So, continually Twitter is my number 1 on all of my sites for
traffic back to my web locations. -You'll check that through your analytic. -I track
them through my Google Analytics so I can see where things are coming from. And
so I'm sharing content, I'm sharing past blog posts, I'm sharing new blog posts,
I'm sharing videos, I'm sharing podcasts and I'm still getting the most traction
from Twitter than I am through any other social platform. -That's real important to
hear. That something that I haven't ever heard before. What really motivates me to
use YouTube and why I gotten such great results on LinkedIn is because I I know
the result, I know how to get it. -Sure. -And so to be able to have a tangible result
like that thinking there's a lot of things that I'm doing but I can look at
my analytics and I'm getting most of my traffic to my website through Twitter,
it's actually a big deal. -Yeah. And I can work my strategy around
it. And in some cases I'm using it like a crutch and I'm careful with that. Because
I also tell my clients when they're deciding on their social media outlets
that your most important responsibility is your own home court advantage. And in
the business world that's your website, it's your retail location it's your
platform. At any given time, Twitter to change and at any given time, iTunes
can drop your podcast. It happened to somebody I listened to last week. At any
time, Facebook can shut down your website. And also happens on YouTube too or they
can say nope you can't put anything out anymore.
It's rare but it can happen. And so your most important marketing responsibility
is your own home court advantage where there's no distractions, there's not lots
of other things going on. Yet, at the same time, I can use Twitter to facilitate
that right now. So I can get people back to my website and away from social media
distractions by utilizing Twitter. And so it's funny because I forget too. Sometimes
I'll get into the habit and I'll get excited about playing and Instagram
stories for a while and be like, "Oh my gosh, I haven't tweeted and I need to go
back and tweet with my audience and engage with them." But because of that
traffic, that is one of my biggest hot buns. -Alright. So one thing
that i know that a strength that I see on Twitter that I would like to use, I
just haven't been able to convince myself to do it.
Okay, the strength that I see is it's a great way to like join in a conversation.
-Absolutely. -I feel like, okay, if I'm if I'm going to use Twitter properly and start
you know, jumping into conversations so that I can network with some great
people, I see it as is it's going to take more time and more effort. Where I'm
trying to reduce my time and become you know, I'm always trying to become more
and more efficient. And I know how to hire somebody else. But I have a hard
time like... Feeling like I can hire somebody to... Because it's you can have
pretty one-on-one conversations, real conversations with people on Twitter.
Almost like you would in a text message. So, how can I do that without it taking
up my time? -Okay, so a couple of things that you mentioned in there that I think
are really key. One of the other reasons why I love Twitter is because the
conversations are already happening. You can just dive in. And Twitter is still
hashtag friendly. Facebook tried to get into the hashtag game. They came in late,
it didn't really work and now if you put hashtags in and often lowers and they
algorithm. Because they don't want you to hijack a hashtag. Twitter doesn't care
about that. And if you want to hijack Megan Markel for example, you can't. Now, I
don't recommend businesses do that unless they have a legit reason to hash
tag into trending conversations. But it's easy to tap in. So I might only have
307,000 followers but if I do hashtag marketing
or hashtag small business or hashtag work at home moms or whatever it is, I
can tap into another conversation that's way more than even my following. And I
can also create conversations that way too. One of the ways that we built our
audience and it still works today. Not exactly the same way but it still works
in principle form is by creating conversations people care about. So, you
can either tap into the conversations that are already happening or you can
create conversations that people will get interested too so that they can come
be part of it. And we built our following through what we call Twitter chats. And so
each week on Wednesdays at noon, we would do hashtag startup chat. And so we would
have a different subject every single week. When we could be about marketing,
next week it would be about press and we would invite other people to participate
with us. But then we had this big open conversation. And as long as people use
the hashtag, we could follow along. And people would ask us questions. We'd put
questions out to a panel of people. But then we gave everyone the microphone. We
gave all these business owners that we were friends with an opportunity to have
that conversation with us. And so they were sharing their tips, their advice. And
they were tapping into a bigger conversation. They might only have a
hundred followers but they were tapping into a bigger conversation they couldn't
have either. And so we were curating and collaborating on conversations through
hashtags that helped build our following but also helped tell really good stories.
And I love and I can't say this enough. I think that it's marketers, it's really
hard to condense our messages. We want to share everything about what we do. But
Twitter forces you to be concise. It's an awesome tool to share small tips, tricks,
bits of information and forces you to hone your message without going
completely overboard. And as a result, it's easy for other people to digest
because it's so concise. -Alright. So, I love answering questions. -Sure. -I love
teaching and training. And so I find on Twitter, I felt like, "Okay, I'm just going
to tweet, Isn't the weather amazing today?" Like I can't wrap my head around
something that's so short like that. So, I can't wrap my head around somebody else
that started a conversation with the elastic question. And I'll go in and I'll
answer it or whatnot. Is there a good way to share content or
do I need to use other platforms for the sharing of the content? -Okay. So and you
also asked this before too and then I went down like hijacking conversations.
But the real question is how do you decide what to say?
So, are you on Twitter and how do you do it without it taking over your life? The
reality is that you can post a hundred times a day. And if your audience
doesn't care then they're happy that you're doing it. Which is different than
any other platform. So you can share a lot more. I don't share a hundred times a
day because I can't think of a hundred things to say
in a day. But I do get specific. One of the videos that we talked about before
was creating your core message. And deciding what your core messages is a
business. And I use that as a foundation for my Twitter messages. And then I will
pick a theme for every month. So for one month I talked about leadership and
another month I talked about success principles and then another month I'm
going to talk about marketing. And maybe even another month, I'll talk about a
marketing content. And then what I'll do is I will curate write and create
graphics around a specific theme and I will schedule those in advance. There's a
lot of different schedulers out there. I use HootSuite. But there's a few others
that work. And so I will schedule the conversation that I want to have. But it
doesn't just work to schedule and forget it. And so, what I do is I go in for 15
minutes a day and I interact. So, in the morning, I'll spend 5 minutes. In
midday, I'll spend 5 minutes. And the evening, I'll spend 5 minutes. If I'm
having a good time, I might stay longer. But I'll go in and interact with people
and I'll retweet other people's things. And I'll respond to people who gave me
comments and questions. And I'll see who asked me questions that I can respond to.
And so, there's still an organic element but there's a very strategic element to
helping move along our messaging and our topics of expertise by doing that in
advance so that the organic stuff is easier to take care of and that the
frequency is there. And I'll pick which podcast I want to promote, which things I
want to get done. But generally speaking, I'll schedule out a month in advance. And
then it just takes me in there engaging with the audience. Because I don't want
you to schedule engagement. That should be organic.
You can schedule content but not engagement. -Okay. So one thing that I'm
trying to wrap my head around. Let's say I were to dive in and do Twitter and do
it the right way. I don't like memes or quotes that are... Like I'm just, "Here's a
cool book. Great, I can send out a quote." You know, every hour, every day. It's like
I want to... If I'm going to make a quote or make a meme or you know, something
caption on a photo, it's like I want it to be a quote that really is coming from
me or that's part of my brand and whatnot. Seems like, "Yeah, that would be
effective. Man, that's a whole lot of work." So, I'm
just... Just asking like what do you literally do? Do you... Do you really write
out a whole bunch of... How much... How much time and effort do you really do? How
much of it is really you, your content, your message. How much of it is stuff
that you just you find that... What's realistic here? -So, I tell people... And this
we could talk about for this for like 8 hours. But... -How long is this video?
-Yeah. Not very long. But the quick answer is, I tell people two, two, fifteen, fifteen.
And what I mean by that is two hours a year, two hours a month, fifteen minutes a
week and fifteen minutes a day. And so, it takes me about 2 hours a month to
create all the content I want. And I'm sharing tips, I'm sharing advice, I'm
sharing information that's coming from me and my brand. I do have quotes because
we found that people love quotes and they're the most shareable. And I also
think it's good to have other people confirm what you've been saying. And so,
it's good to find other resources of .what people are saying out in the world
You can also curate good content of what people are looking at. But in 2 hours a
month, I can really do my whole months worth of posts. -I know that you're not
finished with what you're saying. But that right there obviously already gives
me a big help. Because I love... I love doing things in batches. So I filmed here
more episodes in a day for YouTube. -Mm-hmm. -I don't know why I haven't
wrapped my head around doing that for Twitter. But if... If I were to... One, I have
to know the type of content that is going to work. -Sure. -But if I can... if I can
spend 2 hours. You know or whatever block of time. And get it done for the
entire month, that's really from me that it's not just coming from a quote book
like that. All these helicopters flying by. -They care about this message
too. -Or they they're trying to distract us.
They don't want people to use Twitter. -Those are the Facebook helicopters. -So anyway, um maybe
we were just making up. Maybe there weren't really even helicopters. Anyway,
any final tips you want to share on Twitter for business? -No. I think that to
your point is right. Batching it is going to bring you the best success. And also
helps you look at it as a whole. Instead of waking up in the morning and saying,
"What am I going to post today." And it's a random thought. You're actually sitting
down from a business standpoint and saying, "What do I need people to know
about my business this month and how can I provide value?" And part of that is not
just about pulling quotes. I tell people that they need to provide tips and
advice, they need to provide questions to get people to interact and engage, they
need to sell, they need to get people to sign up for their email list. So grow
your use Twitter to grow your email list. And the last one is sale selling. But
selling is only 10% about what you do. And so everything else are things
that you've created. But also the final tip I will say on this because I know we
could talk for a long time. Don't be afraid to use old things. So I have a
list has old blog posts, old videos, old podcasts. And if they're still relevant,
obviously, if they're not time sensitive, I will still share those. And so it's not
about creating brand new things every time, it's about sprinkling in some of
the past things that you've done. Because those are just as relevant and valuable
today as they were 2 or 3 years ago. Assuming they haven't changed. -Yeah.
If I think of a really good tweet that I sent out right now. And 5 people see
it, I could probably send that tweet again. And not have any problems. -Mm-hmm.
-I'd have one more quick question. -I like it.
Does Twitter have a scheduler or do you need to use something like HootSuite? -So,
currently, Twitter doesn't have their own scheduler. They have third-party. Facebook
has their own scheduler and you should always use the Facebook scheduler. But
for Twitter third parties, there's like buffer which is also can be a good one.
I'm used to HootSuite and HootSuite seems to play well in the sandbox. But
right now that's the way. -Cool. There is Twitter and why we should be using it. -Excited.
-Thanks Michelle. Be sure to subscribe. Got lots of amazing videos here.
Of course because I made them. -Right. -We'll see you tomorrow.