Podcast:

Transcription:

Good morning internet fans, Ryan Perry here, Simple Biz Support. Today is Wednesday, April 6th; therefore, it is Social Media Wednesday and as usual I have Sarah Giometti with Provaro Marketing. Good morning, Sarah!

Sarah Giometti: Good morning, Ryan, How are you?

RP: I’m doing great. The sun is definitely shining today. It’s supposed to hit, I think, over 90 degrees in Sonoma County, so pretty excited about that.

SG: Do you think, I mean 90 out here, that’s insane.

RP: Then it supposed to rain over the weekend and I have a friend who’s a photographer that posted about “ah! Mother nature” because she has her senior, her high school senior photo shoots this weekend.

SG: Of course.

RP: Yeah, of course. Thank you, mother nature, it’s going to put a damper on things.

SG: Yeah, the 90-degree beautiful blue skies is on a Wednesday.

RP: Yep, yep. Today, since it is social media Wednesday, we are going to talk social media, specifically Twitter, and this is going to be a great show for people who are interested in improving their visibility, credibility on Twitter.

SG: It is. We’re going to give you three tips to improve your tweet so that you improve your visibility and engagement and with the ultimate goal of improving your business through Twitter.

RP: Alright. Perfect. And I’m assuming we’re just going to plug in some automated software that takes care of all of it so I don’t have to worry about it.

SG: Nope. Nope. You can automate some of it, but not all of it. There’s nothing wrong with scheduling out some of your tweets even kind of most of your tweets, but you still have to have a system behind it. And the first tips, I’m going to look at my notes. The first tip is to tweet without links occasionally. Don’t have every single one of your tweets be a link. I’m sometimes guilty of it because I’m like, “Oh great article, great article.” Research shows that tweets without links, they do, they get better engagement. I swear, I feel like I haven’t got my coffee this morning yet. Tweets without links get better engagement. And the more that you tweet without links and you up your trust factor with your followers, and they start to know, like, and trust you and like the content you’re putting out. When you do put out a link, because you doing it kind of sparingly, then you’ll probably get a better engagement and click through rates and those tweets because it’s not the only thing that you’ve been putting out there.

RP: I think a lot of it just has to do with credibility. There’s so many people on Twitter that are just pushing, pushing, pushing content and that’s really not what the goal of Twitter is. And so by incorporating a link in every single post and I know I’m guilty of that just cause there’s so much content out there that is great to share. And Mr. Wonderful, thank you for joining the show again this week. Having that link content there all the time for the people that are just scanning link, link, link, link, link. Oh, you’re selling, selling, selling so I’m just going to ignore you verses actual engagement. And I know for me one of the things that I thought of were different questions I could ask people and it’s really based on my target market.

RP: I have a lot of business people, typically male who are technology. I like to ask questions about technology. What’s your favorite browser? Do you use a DSLR? And then, I also, I haven’t done it yet but I thought about doing like a 20 questions, and you know, going, “Alright, let’s play 20 questions. I’ll go first. What’s your favorite color?” Something like that to do engagement. And for me and my industry, I always have a hard time because it’s business people I’m trying to attract not consumers so I need to be professional, yet relatable, yet personable, but still professional.

SG: Right. You want to have a little bit of a fun factor in there because that’s part of doing business. You do business with people you like. And if you don’t like them, you don’t continue to do business with them. Like the business that we’re in, we want long term relationships, and so it’s how we attract people that we want to do business with, have a little bit of that fun in there, but still be professional and show, like, “Yeah, no, I know what I’m doing.” And that is a tricky business especially when you’re a service business owner. It’s a little harder to implement the fun while still being professional. But having the questions out there that… Questions, quotes, tips that don’t have links associate them, you’re just… It gives that giving feeling. You’re giving information versus a link especially if you’re using some automated software and you’re using URL shorteners for tracking, they don’t know if it’s your link or not. They have no idea. They might be able to see the handle of the… God, I cannot think today. Giving credit to…

RP: You’re saying hopefully you’re sharing who you got the information from.

SG: Yeah, you’re giving recognition to who you got the article from so that they can kind of decipher that the link is not yours, but they ultimately don’t know that because you’re using a URL shortener, they can’t read the URL and connect it to your username. So not including the links occasionally or fairly often, really, helps build that trust factor and have you look like you’re just giving here’s a tip, here’s some help for you, and eventually if you need my help, you’ll come back to me.

RP: Yeah, and I think we just kind of threw in a bonus tip there, which is if you are going to share somebody else’s content, especially if you have enough room sometimes it gets too long, throw their Twitter handle in there. I do that Forbes, Success Magazine. I do it with everybody, but especially, if I’m… Again, my target audience, business people so Forbes, Success Magazine, John Assaraf. There’s a couple of other people that are not social media related or strictly my business related, but it’s relevant to entrepreneurs.

SG: Right. Yup. So…

RP: Yeah, perfect. So that was tip number one. Tip number two?

SG: Tip number two is using the right hashtags. So you don’t want to overdo it, but you definitely need hashtags because it’s one of the biggest pieces of content that people search by on Twitter to find what they’re looking for. So that could be difficult. You might think you have a great hashtag and nobody knows what it is and nobody’s using it. So Hashtagify is a great way to identify what could be really good hashtags for you. So you can put in the one hashtag you thought of, and they kind of mind map out the relevant… Other relevant hashtags that you can use. You want to use a couple in Twitter. You only have 140 characters. Sorry, did they change that? I can never keep up. But you only want to use a couple. You don’t want to be hashtag nuts because it’s hard to read.

RP: Right. Save that for Instagram.

SG: Yeah. And even then, you don’t want to use a million of them. But that’s another episode. Then you can take the hashtags that you identified in Hashtagify and go over to RiteTag and see the popularity. Is it popular or is it overused? Maybe you don’t want to use it because people aren’t wanting to search for it. Or you won’t get any recognition because you’ll just be buried in the millions and millions of tweets that are already using it.

RP: Just to clarify, Hashtagify.me, correct?

SG: Yeah.

RP: So that’s a website. And then Ritetag.com. So those are two different websites that you use for hashtag research, but they are two different tools. One is actually what are the different key or hashtags that are being searched that are popular, and then RiteTag will let you know how popular that is? If it’s being overused or underused?

SG: Yeah. Hashtagify will help you identify which ones you might want to use, and RiteTag identifies the popularity of it and the over usage of it. So if it’s overused, maybe you don’t want to use it. Pick something that’s a little less popular.

RP: Right. Okay. Perfect. And that takes a little time and effort. It’s not something you’re able to automate. But just like you would do keyword research for creating content for your website when creating your website, you want to do the same type of research and make sure that you’re targeting the right people that’s relevant to your product or service.

SG: Right. And you don’t have to do it every time you go to do tweets. You can do it once a month. I mean, data changes, so you want to do it relatively frequent. But it’s probably a good guess that what you’re using will still be relevant a month from now for a hashtag. So you don’t have to do it often, but at least once a month, once every couple of months, just check in and see because there might be new ones that you’re missing out that have popped up in popularity and relevancy.

RP: And I’m going to test our little blab thingy here. Go ahead and keep talking. I’m going to drop RiteTag in. Actually, yeah, we tested this offline, but I forget what it would do if I drop a link in here. Oh, it doesn’t like it. All right, no words.

SG: So the third tip is timing of your tweets. So Twitter moves faster than the speed of light it feels like, so you do need to tweet often. And but also finding out when your followers are online to see if you need to adjust your tweets and your scheduling. Again, another tool, Tweriod, T-W, like tweet, but period. T-W-E-R-I-O-D, tweriod.com is a tool that you can sign in. They’ll look at your tweets, they’ll look at your followers’ tweets, they’ll analyze it and come up with optimal times for you to post on Twitter. So this way you can see if for some reason the optimal time is 11:00 at night and you never tweeted 11:00 at night, maybe you should because your followers are tweeting at 11:00 at night, which means they’re on their… You’re more likely to get engagement from them because they’re there, they’re active. This is one that’s easy to use and it’s just knowing your numbers everywhere else.

SG: We talked about it on Facebook. Looking at your analytics, seeing what’s the best time of day every day to post based on your followers ’cause all of this is to engage with your followers, and if you’re not engaging with them, you’re not on there at the same time they are, then it’s almost impossible for you to engage if you don’t pay attention to that. And so that’s a really easy one to implement and adjust your tweet schedule.

RP: Yeah. And I think with that there’s two things: One is that people want consistency. There’s a reason why we do this show every Wednesday at 9:45 AM Pacific Standard Time so people know, “Okay, they’re going to come back. There’s going to be more information.” So the same thing on Twitter. You have to post on a regular basis, which is pretty much daily, if you want people to like, trust, and follow you essentially. And then number two, I think, is that you need to tweet throughout the day. So I really get frustrated when people are like, “Oh, I got to tweet 15 times.” So they knock out 15 messages at one time, and then they’re like, “Boom, I’m done.” It doesn’t work that way. You got to spread it out throughout the day. So number three, if we’re going to use Tweriod to figure out when the most optimal time is to tweet, my recommendation is to, as you’re collecting your content for the day, is put your best content in those peak hours.

RP: Because if you’re doing 15 to 30 tweets a day, which I believe is the rough estimate. Obviously it varies, depending on industry. The reality is, you’re not going to be able to find 15 to 30 pieces of great-quality content, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It’s just impossible, so finding the right time to post your best content, so you get maximized value out of it is very powerful. And I use Post Planner to post my content out, and then throughout the day, when I find something when I’m in Twitter, I’ll automatically retweet something, or I might just drop it in. But as far as making sure that I have my content, as I’m having breakfast, I go ahead, and I’m eating breakfast, and I get my… I’m about 15 posts a day, is what I do.

SG: Yeah, and that…

RP: I know you use something else.

SG: I use Post Planner and Bundle Post…

RP: Bundle Post.

SG: Combined. Because Bundle Post allows me to have some just standard text only content in there, so I can mix that in with links. What it doesn’t have right now is the picture aspect of it. So… And that’s where… The scheduling tool, making sure you’re consistent. That’s where the scheduling tool is handy, but you don’t want to put everything in schedule, and then never come back to it because if people respond to it, engage… You need to be paying attention to it and engaging. And then, yeah, you can post on the fly, but at least the scheduling tool keeps you consistent, in case you have really busy day, and you just can’t get around to it. But don’t rely on it 100%. Please don’t.

RP: Right, right.

SG: Well, it’ll negatively affect your success, eventually, if that’s all you did.

RP: Right, alright. Perfect. We got about less than a minute left. Quick highlight of the three tips for today regarding Twitter.

SG: So number one, tweet without links sometimes. Don’t always use links in every single one of your tweets. Number two, use the right hashtags. So utilize the tools Hashtagify and RiteTag, to figure out what are the optimal hashtags for you to use. And the third one is, utilize a tool like Tweriod to find out when your audience is online, and when the best time is for you to put out your best content.

RP: Alright, perfect. With that, that is today’s show. As always, part of the goal of this show is to give you, the business owner, some information that you can use today in your marketing. So if you find this overwhelming, all these different websites, check ’em out, and maybe you just start using one. And if you can incorporate just one aspect of something that we’ve taught today, then your marketing’s going to be that much better. And I always think of marketing as layers, and if we can add just a little bit, another layer of marketing, you’re going to get better results. And that will allow you to add another layer, and so on and so forth. So even if you take just one of these tips, and I know number one… I gotta incorporate that better. It’s going to make you a better marketer on Twitter. So with that, Sarah, as always I appreciate your time, and I will see you next week, same computer, same screen, with some more great social media information.

SG: Thanks, Ryan, it’s always a pleasure.

RP: Alright everybody, that is it for today’s show. Looking forward to seeing you next week. Take care.