Twitter Marketing: A Fresh Perspective for 2022

Neal Schaffer: 0:00

I just have one question to ask you today. Do you tweet? Find out all about the hidden power of Twitter in today's episode of The your digital marketing coach podcast, digital social media content, influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, blogging, tick tocking, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing, who there's a lot to cover, whether you're a marketing professional entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got, Neil, on your side, because Neal Schaffer is your digital digital marketing marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach. And this is Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody. Welcome to your digital marketing coach podcast. This is Neal Schaffer, your digital marketing coach, how the heck are you doing today. So one thing that I like to do, because I cover a broad range of topics, both here on this podcast, as well as on my blog, and on my YouTube channel, is every once in a while to go back and see is my content out of balance. And I say that because I want to make sure that I cover all these different topics, not necessarily are of equal importance, but I do believe that there is a need. If I am going to go a year publishing 52 episodes, that I cover each one of these topics at least once over the last 52 weeks. I think that's a really good exercise. If you have a blog or your own podcast or YouTube channel where you cover multiple categories, like your blog categories, if you follow my advice on creating a library of content, you'll know that I have various categories myself on my blog, it's important to keep some sort of equity, obviously, some categories are going to be more popular than others. Those of you who read the age of influence who listen to this podcast, obviously, when I publish about influencer marketing, I tend to get a little bit of uptick or increased downloads. Same goes with LinkedIn, because I've written two books in the subjects I know very clear what those areas are that you enjoy. But I also know that you want to be educated on all things digital and social media marketing. And obviously, that is why you are listening to this podcast. interesting side note, going over my blog, I have really been trying to do the same thing on my blog, really going from a social media marketing blog to more of a digital marketing blog. And if I look at my categories, and how many posts I have, for each category, I'm actually really, really happy with the progress. For those who haven't been in Neal schaffer.com. Recently, I hope that you'll check it out, because I just have a tremendous plethora of resources there. But you know, back in the day, I would say, you know, right now I'm looking I have 470 published blog posts. And back in the day, I would say that a majority of those blog posts were either LinkedIn, which right now represents 42 of those 470, about 10%, as well as social media marketing in general, which is about 59 and influencer marketing, because I wrote the book, The Age of influence, I have 68. But equally, I have 41 blog posts about blogging, I have 40 about content marketing, I've gotten up to 32 a lot email marketing, and I started out from scratch just a little bit over a year ago, I still have 29 about Facebook, marketing 50 about Instagram marketing, 18 about SEO, it's growing, I'm getting there. I didn't grow as fast as email marketing, but I'm doing more there a 43 on social media tools. I've always blogged about technology, 26 on Twitter, marketing, and 19 on YouTube and video marketing. So there's definitely some categories I'm a little bit light on. But they're all important to give you a holistic perspective on what is possible with digital and social media marketing. So today, I present an episode on Twitter, something that I have not done in a while, but it's actually this war that is going on at the time of this recording. And I think when this is published, it'll still be going on this war that we have in Ukraine has really helped me once again, really appreciate the value and the unique presence that Twitter has in social media marketing. Now, you've heard me on recent episodes, talk about how of all the social media platforms that Twitter is still the one that generates the most traffic to my website. That has been true for the last several years. Obviously Twitter is where I have the most followers, it's at something like 223,000 I am verified on Twitter. And if you Go into your own notifications or what have you, there's a little bit of a preference for those that are verified, it seems. I don't know how much preference I get in the algorithm in general, but there might be a little bit of a boost there. But that is why, you know, just going where the traffic is, I've always invested time and energy in Twitter, I have always said, No tweet is left behind, have always chosen those social media platforms that allow me to archive at mentions direct messages, so that when I am on a business trip, and sometimes they can pile up for a week or two, I always get back to them, I always want to respond to the people that reach out and engage with me. And to be honest with you, you know, I joined Twitter back in 2008. And it was really, after I finished writing the rough draft of webmail, networking, understanding, leveraging and maximizing LinkedIn back in March of 2009. I still remember that book was published in September of 2009. But that's where I really went full on into Twitter. I participated, we used to call them tweet ups, but I met many friends there locally, nationally, and internationally. I've gotten business on Twitter, it's where Rutgers University now I teach a Rutgers Business School, Rutgers University reached out to me many years ago. It is where the mariachi musician Pepe Igualada Grammy Award winning musician who reached out to me for saw my tweets on Twitter, it's where I have developed business, it's where I've developed relationships. It's where a lot of magic happens. And if you're on Twitter, I am hoping that this episode rekindles, your passion for the platform. And if you're not on Twitter, I am hoping that you think twice about it. But it's really the past. Well, week and a half since this war started, that I've been on the native app. Now, a lot of us marketers publish a lot to Twitter. And we tend to use tools to do that. And when you use a tool on a platform, you sort of lose touch with the reality of the platform. And I definitely realize that with Twitter, really as a place to monitor the news, Twitter does a good job of pointing out news that's going on from reputable sources. There is a discover page that will give you the latest on what's going on in Ukraine as well as other incidents, obviously, you have these trending hashtags, trending topics. It's a really, really great discovery tool for the news. And although one could say yes, you might be able to see the news on Facebook or LinkedIn or what have you. You know, Twitter really is the place where the media is I like to share the story when the Fukushima disaster was happening. And I sort of tweeted out that, you know, I had friends that were trying to evacuate from Fukushima, you know, when I woke up the next morning, and I saw a tweet was actually a direct message, because I allow people to direct message me. But it was from a reporter from the BBC, who wanted to actually interview that family. And that's sort of the magic. Once again, that happens on Twitter, it's because it's where the news breaks. And it's where the media is. And if you're a business, or if you're a solopreneur. entrepreneur, you want to get covered by the media. And that alone should give you a reason to be a little bit more active, because you never know, when your tweet when your information when your news is picked up. Now, if you're on Twitter, and you don't see the value, you may think it's really, really random. The life span of a tweet is very short. It's the repetitive gesture of checking it on Twitter, if you're doing it organically, several times a day, if you're tweeting a few times a day is going to be the cadence that you need, I believe in order to make impact there because it is so noisy. But the way I like to put Twitter in the realm of social media marketing is if you are a b2b brand, I'd say Twitter is second most important to LinkedIn. Although if you use ads, Facebook ads are going to be pretty important as well. But from organic perspective, by far for b2b, Twitter is second most important. You have a lot of CEOs that are active on Twitter, your thought leaders are on Twitter, you have a lot of intelligent conversations that go on in Twitter chats that are very, very unique to Twitter that you don't have anywhere else and more and more received Twitter spaces. Although the verdict is still out on them. You do have a chance to engage with other subject matter experts there that you really can't do outside the clubhouse right on social audio. You also have b2c celebrities. So if you want to get your tweet to appear on, you know, a sports program or if you want to engage with an athlete or an actor, actress, Twitter I mean Instagram gives you the ability to do that as well, but because the media are on Twitter I think it makes it a lot easier for that tweet to get picked up. Because guess what, when you tweet, you're on a world stage, like that tweet that went out that got picked up by a BBC reporter. You know, tweets are being archived in the Library of Congress, you never know what happens with that tweet, I guess one could say the same thing. When you upload a tic tock video, you never know how viral it's going to go. We can say the same thing about Twitter. And there's very few platforms today that we can say that about, but compared to a tick tock, or any other platform, Twitter really is the easiest platform to connect and engage with others on to have conversations. And I know that just like any other social network, their spam, but you can find your tribe, I believe and have a rational communication with them a lot easier than you could on any other platform. I've been having a lot of fun. So I I speak, you know, Mandarin Chinese. And although I don't write it the way I used to, in the past, it's been really fascinating engaging with other Chinese users of Twitter. These are primarily people in the mainland, who I believe are hired by the Communist Party as censors, because you cannot access Twitter in China. If you're Chinese, they blocked it unless you have a virtual private network. And everyone is overwhelming the speaking the party and the government line. But using Google Translate and understanding that the psyche mentality of Chinese that I've known of having some really, really deep conversations, and really just trying to get to better understand how they view this Ukrainian war. These are conversations and at the end of the day, I end up blocking these people. But that's beside the point. But at the end of the day, it's really hard to have that sort of a conversation outside of Twitter, in my opinion. And other interesting things about Twitter is from a content perspective, right? You have your tweet, you can attach a photo, you can attach a video. But Twitter also natively supports GIFs, or gifts, however you want to pronounce it. So it's a little bit harder to do when you're using a third party tool that might not support gifts. But when you're on twitter.com, or on your mobile, it is very, very easy to just upload a GIF that supports whatever emotion you have, it's really, really easy to retweet, and do a quote retweet as well and share other people's and comment on other people's opinions, these are both very, very popular things to do, you can also do a poll, which is a very, very popular type of content on LinkedIn, you can be doing the same thing on Twitter, as well. So if you want to go a little bit further with Twitter, assuming that you're already publishing content on LinkedIn, on a Facebook, or on an Instagram, or even on a tick tock, you can take that exact same content and publish it on Twitter, that would be my number one recommendation for you. Now, I do speak to a lot of different audiences. There is one particular audience where I'm not sure how much value Twitter is going to have for you. These are the people that are focused on a local market, like real estate agents, insurance agents, Twitter is global in reach. There aren't a lot of people who are doing searches, I believe, for local hashtags, local topics. So you might be better off in other platforms. But if you want to be seen, nationally and globally, that's where Twitter really shines. Because you're either out for public display across the world, or your private account, in which case, there's no value really, from a marketing perspective on being on Twitter, or on social media, you know, from that perspective. So, if you have content, it's easy to share. Now, two important things here, I always recommend that you share natively if possible. If not, you can use a tool. I use tools like Agora Pulse, social B, I've talked about these two platforms a lot. There's obviously other platforms like Sprout Social sendible. I can go on and on and on social pilot, but every single platform that is available as a social media dashboard, every single tool supports Twitter without a doubt right now, they may not support the gifts and they may not support the polls, but in terms of Link content, or status update or photos or videos that you might post on LinkedIn or Facebook or even on an Instagram. You can definitely cross post those Twitter. One thing though, that is really interesting is if you try to post to Twitter from Instagram, then the tweet is not going to show the photo and there is a recipe using ifttt.com It's something that I've posted about online that if you use that recipe on if this than that, which is what IFTTT stands for. It will show the image but Better yet, if you're on a mobile phone, uploading an Instagram, just copy the caption and just go over to Twitter take the extra few seconds, that's really the best way to upload that. On the other hand, if it's link content, or you're having a conversation or status update on LinkedIn, if you integrate Twitter, with your LinkedIn profile, you will be able to easily share that to Twitter. And it's going to come to link that leads back to your LinkedIn profile that can be very strategic. I haven't experimented with photos and videos to see whether they appear it wouldn't surprise me if they did. Because I don't think Twitter fears LinkedIn the way they fear Instagram. But you'll have to be the final judge of that and really to experiment, but you know, the infrastructure, the ecosystem is there to support you on Twitter. So it's really, in my mind, a no brainer thing to do. The problem, though, is if you just do one way publishing on Twitter, you might get found, you might start to get some clicks on your links. This is the hidden engagement that it doesn't show up in likes and retweets, but it shows up your Google Analytics. But really, the magic starts when you engage with others, when you engage with influencers with thought leaders with your followers. And the more you tweet, and the more you engage, and that engagement should also include proactively following, the more things tend to happen over time, like anything else in social media, it has a tumbleweed effect. So whether it's following 10 new people a day, 20 new people a day, starting five new conversations a day 10 new conversations a day, you know, by doing a search for a hashtag, or keyword that's relevant to your industry. These are very, very simple things you can do to get the conversation started, and really to build relationships. Interestingly enough, Twitter has become the center for where conversations about crypto and NF T's takes place. So if you want to be part of that community, you'll probably want to be on Twitter, I listened to a few YouTuber podcasts. And they seem to be talking about all these conversations that happen on Twitter as well. So I've talked a lot about the ROI of social media, not from the traffic you generate, but from the relationships that you create. And from that perspective, Twitter, I mean, Instagram to some point, but I don't think it's the same as it is with Twitter, the ability to develop those relationships, to easily tweet easily reply, and to engage on many different levels, including on an emotional level, using Jeff's using retweets. These are things that the Instagram platform doesn't provide us, do they? So just some thoughts on Twitter, I really hope that you'll either give it a renewed try or that you'll start out on it. Make sure you're following me if you do. I am Neal Schaffer on Twitter as everywhere else. That's the real Neil NDA L. Sh e FF er, we'll put a link in the show notes as well. And I look forward to sharing your success story on Twitter. What relationships did you create? What traffic did you create? What business and conversions did you develop from Twitter, I believe it is possible. And part of me is like when everybody talks about going to LinkedIn or a tick tock or an Instagram, there's always value in all these other social networks that a lot of people have forgotten about. They're all equally important. They all have hundreds of millions of users, including hundreds of millions of monthly active users. So today, your homework is to have a fresh and renewed look at Twitter, and see how you can work it in to your marketing process, as a way to diversify your efforts, but also to find new value in what I think is still a very, very important social network. That is Twitter. Alright, my friends, as I went through all those different categories of content and blogged about, if there is something that you think I haven't talked about recently on the podcast that you'd like me to cover, please feel free to reach out, you can also leave it as a comment in a review content. For those of you that are longtime listeners on your favorite podcast listening app. And if this is your first time because you did a search for episodes about Twitter, I sincerely hope that you'll subscribe because, yes, I do talk about Twitter, but I talk about a lot more than just Twitter. And I think that those that are successful are those that have a very, very holistic perspective on digital and social media marketing, and know where everything fits into place and what strategic levers to best pull for whatever state you're in, in your digital and social media marketing. That's sort of my vision for this podcast, and what I do, and I hope that you find unique value in it as well. Hey, if you're like Looking for more help for your business, I do offer fractional cmo consulting. This is one on one consulting. Just you and me can go to Neal Schaffer comm slash cmo to find out more about that. And as always, I want to thank you for listening. Wherever you are in the world. I used to say this was my old podcast, make it a great social day. This is your digital marketing coach Neal Schaffer signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach, questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast dot Neal schaffer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes, and Neal schaffer.com to tap into the 400 Plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.