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Good morning, internet fans. It’s Ryan Perry, Simple Biz Support, today is Wednesday, January the 13th, 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. Apparently it rained last night, but you’d never know because it’s nice and sunny out today.

SG: It’s not sunny out here.

RP: That’s what happens when you live out in the country, you get all the clouds and everything.

SG: Right. Right.

RP: The roads are wet, but we had a good night of rain, which in Northern California is always a plus. I’m looking forward to going up to Tahoe and doing some snow skiing soon.

SG: Yep, yeah. I heard the Sierra snowpack is back up to where it should be for the… A little bit above average?

RP: Above average. The last I heard it was 111%, which is good stuff.

SG: Fantastic. We really need it.

RP: Yes. Yes. So instead of shredding snow today, though, we’re going to be talking about Twitter, and specifically, we’ve got seven tips. And I’m going to throw you for a loop because one of these seven tips is brand new to me, and I didn’t even know about it so I want to talk about it first.

SG: Alright. Go for it.

RP: And that is… You’re telling me that you can actually tag people in images, just like you can on Facebook, in Twitter?

SG: Correct. You can, too.

RP: I didn’t know that. Mind blown. Just… It’s gone. And as soon as we add 10,000 characters to Twitter, we might as well call it Twitter Face or Twitter Book. We’ll call it Twitter Book.

SG: Yeah. Hopefully Twitter, you might… People might have heard the news that Twitter is thinking of expanding from the 140 characters. I personally think it’s a mistake. 10,000 characters is a lot of characters, and Twitter moves so fast that by the time you read something that’s that long, you’ve missed 100 tweets. So it’s… That kind of, “Too long, didn’t read,” starts to play a factor, and that’s… The 140 characters is what makes Twitter awesome, is you have to be succinct, so… But that’s not part of today’s show. When you are uploading images, you can tag people in the images and it doesn’t take up from your Tweet. So you can tag them and have it show up, but also, you can still put your full information in on the Tweet that you’re doing. So it’s kind of a double added exposure because… Like if I put up a photo up and tagged you, you get notified, it shows up in your feed, so it’s better exposure, and it’s also a way if… For… Perhaps you’re writing a blog article, and we both put these videos in blog articles and mention each other, that it’s a way to give credit to the people that you’ve mentioned within your blog article.

RP: Yeah, definitely. And what’s really cool about it is I understand you can tag up to 10 people, and it does not affect your Twitter account, your 140 characters. So to be able to tag up to 10 people, now don’t go crazy like Facebook, or, “Oh, I was at the bowling alley and I tagged all my friends because I want to let ’em know.” No, that’s not what its about. It needs to be relevant, but what… This is a simple way to gain extra exposure, and that’s why it’s one of the seven tips in order to boost your visibility on Twitter.

SG: Right. So it’s just… It’s one of… It… Yeah, don’t go crazy, don’t mis-tag people, don’t spam tag people. That’s a way to totally screw up your Twitter exposure is if you started spam tagging people and they get pissed off, so you definitely want to do it… If there’s only one person who should be tagged only tag the one person.

RP: Okay, perfect. So that is something that’s new to me. Hopefully it’s new to you watching, so check it out, use it. What’s number two on the list?

SG: Well then we’ll go back up to the top, where… Use visuals, so this kinda backtracks a little, use pictures, so then you can tag people. If someone’s surfing their feed in Twitter, the picture shows up really big and pretty and so your Tweet is less likely to get lost in the masses. Most people… I forgot what the current average is of how many people people follow, but it’s a lot, and it moves at the speed… Twitter moves at the speed of light so if you’ve got visuals, visuals catch our eyes, we can process an image… I think it was MIT was something like 1.3 milliseconds. We are… We can process an image faster than we can read, so the image will catch somebody’s eye, so you want to make sure you use visual images and vibrant images that will interest people so then they read the headline that you have that goes with it.

RP: Right. Perfect. And along with images can be video, also. I think those two kinda go hand in hand.

SG: Yeah. The only thing with video is you have to… You still have to do it native within the Twitter app on your phone, you can… And I think it’s 30 seconds, I get them all mixed up.

RP: Yeah. No. I think it’s 30 seconds ’cause what I do for me, personally, the way I use video on Twitter, is anytime I get a new follower, somebody that follows me, I get on my phone and I send them a quick little video message saying, “Hey, thank you for following me on Twitter.”

SG: Right. So it’s 30 seconds, but that also shows up big and pretty and catches somebody’s eye. So definitely utilize multi-media on your Twitter feed. The next one, again, goes along with photos. Use the proper two-to-one ration, so it’s twice as wide as it is high. So a perfect example: It’s 800 pixels wide by 400 pixels high. You want to make sure you have a proper two-to-one ratio so that you fill the entire space in the newsfeed and it really stands out, and it looks good, too. So it’s not cropping in funny places. And it’s easy to do that, every computer comes with some sort of basic photo editing software built in. We were able to change the ratio to a two-to-one, crop it properly to a two-to-one ratio. So it should be pretty simple for you to do that before you upload it to Twitter.

RP: Yeah. And if you don’t have software, Pixlr.com is a real easy way. And then if you’re not sure, “Well, how do I do it?” Just do a YouTube search for how to change the ratio of an image and there’s thousands of videos out there that’ll show you exactly how to step through it. So alright, good.

SG: So that one’s super simple. So that covers photos for Twitter, it’s something I hope that you start to include in your strategy moving forward. But the next one is using awesome headlines. So… Especially if you’re putting links out there, you want your Tweet to be headline-like versus descriptor-like. People will read a headline, the headline will determine whether or not they click through the link. And so a headline will get better… Headline-type content will get better exposure and better interaction than if you try to describe what’s in the article. I mean, it’s kind of self-explanatory.

RP: Such as, “Our Seven Tips to Boost your Twitter Visibility.”

SG: Right. Instead of saying, “In this article, we’re going to give you seven ways to boost your expertise on Twitter.” The Seven Tips to Boost your Twitter Exposure in headline format, like the initial caps on every word is a better way to do it than to put the descriptor in there like it’s more like a paragraph. ‘Cause you don’t have… Just ’cause you have 140 characters, you don’t have to use them all.

RP: That is a… Especially on Twitter, you do not have to use them all.

SG: Yep. Short and sweet really works on Twitter ’cause people are skimming it to see what information that they need to have off of it.

RP: Go ahead.

SG: We talked about… Oh, ’cause we… We’ve gone totally out of order. I have my list and…

RP: I know. I got to mess with you every now and then. I don’t want to make this too easy. I gotta keep the brains working, I gotta keep the brains working. Probably, I’m guessing, it has something to do with analytics though.

SG: It does. It does. That is the next one that we haven’t covered on the list. We’ve talked about analytics before. You have to… With Facebook, you don’t have to turn them on. With Twitter, you have to turn them on. So you have to make sure you go to analytics.twitter.com and sign up. You don’t have to do advertising to have this, but you have to go and turn it on and it’ll start tracking from that moment forward. So you’re not going to get any historical data, unfortunately. So make sure if you haven’t done that already, that’s the very first thing. You must go do that today, even if you don’t look at it for three months. That way, when you finally are ready to look at your analytics, you can go back and you’ve got some historical data. But you definitely want to use your analytics to see how many impressions you’re getting, how many profile views you’re getting. If it’s gone up, if it’s gone down, what’s the interaction, which Tweets are your most interactive with Tweets because that helps you refine your strategy moving forward. And if one particular type of Tweet performed really, really well, do more like that. And if one was horrifically a failure, do less like that. And the only way you’re going to know that is through analytics.

RP: Yeah. The other thing about analytics that I don’t know if a lot of people know is that when you click on your profile image, you click analytics, you get a page and it shows you your current month. You scroll down, it shows you your prior month. There’s actually a little bitty link so if you’re looking at your first month towards the right hand side at the bottom of the first month, and I forget exactly what it says but there’s a little blue link there, if you click on it, it’s going to take you to a whole new room, a wealth of information that’ll let you know your demographics, people went to college, what their income is, what their… Not only their income, but what their overall wealth status is, what they like. It has different personality styles that are associated, what type of phone they use. There is a wealth of information that Twitter will give you, you just have to know where to find it. And what’s really cool about that is when you look at your analytics, when you go into that deep section of analytics, is you actually get an idea of who your ideal person is on Twitter. We call that a persona, and if you know what that persona is, if you know it’s tech-heavy… For me, I think I’m about 85% male, follows me on Twitter, very tech heavy, more adventurous, and that helps drive some of the content that I share. It’s not all about social media, but I also share stuff about business and travel and some other things that are relative to my target audience.

SG: Right. And I’m trying to find that link, it’s probably buried in here somewhere.

RP: Yeah. I know exactly where it’s at ’cause I looked at it yesterday. And let’s not worry about that. I actually did a One Minute Marketing Tip that shows you how to find it, so I’ll go ahead and link it so you people can figure that out.

SG: Yeah. It’ll tell you demographics, it’ll tell you the best time to Tweet based on your followers. It gives you a wealth of information. So if you’re not utilizing analytics, you really need to utilize analytics and then go… When Ryan adds the link for his 1-minute marketing video, go there and see how to find that data so that you can look at it and do a better job. And so we actually only have one more. Oh, no. We have two more, sorry. With three minutes to go. So the next one is kinda the… Use the data that’s out there. Use the science. We’ve talked about this before. More retweets happen on Sunday, most retweets happen after 8:00 PM, things like that. Take those tips and adjust your strategy a bit for that. Ask people to retweet, but use out the full word. Use the data that we’ve talked about before in the past to refine your strategy to get better exposure. And so that one’s… We’ve covered it.

RP: Yeah, definitely. And when it comes to science, the one thing you got to be aware of is that we may feel things are this way, but when you actually look at the science and the data, it might be this way. So as a business owner, be open to the fact that not everybody necessarily thinks or wants what you want.

SG: Right. So if you sell to people who typically work Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 5:00, and you’re only posting during then, you’re missing a lot of opportunity because most likely, they’re on Twitter outside of working hours and so you want to reach them at those periods. So you definitely want to look at the data to see when the best times are to Tweet things like that and adjust it so it actually works for you and not what you think. And the final one is pin your Tweet. You can pin a specific Tweet to your profile so that every time you get a profile view, they see that particular Tweet. So if you’re promoting a product or a special or a program, you can pin a Tweet for that particular program to your profile. And it’s a really simple thing. If you go look at all your tweets, kind of on the left-hand side bottom, there’s three little dots. You click the three little dots, you get a drop-down menu that says ‘pin this Tweet’, and it’ll pin it to your profile. So as your profile views are increasing, the exposure to that program, special, whatever you’re offering, whatever you want to highlight, there’s exposure to that too with an added increase of interaction.

RP: Alright, very cool. I’m almost thinking… ‘Cause I haven’t used that yet, it’s on my list of things to do, I’m actually thinking of doing a short little introduction video of, “Hey, this is why you want to follow me on Twitter,” and then pin it.

SG: Yeah, that’s a great way to start off, especially if you’re actively working on growing your following right now. That’s a great way to start with using the pinned Tweet, is a welcome video. You’ve got 30 seconds to talk to somebody, it’s a full commercial-length time. So you can definitely say, “Hey, welcome. This is what we’re all about. This is why you should follow us. Thank you very much,” and have a good video there. You can change it whenever you want.

RP: Yeah. And the other thing I like about that is it personalizes. I just did a video yesterday about automation. Apparently, on LinkedIn, I had an anniversary of some sort and I got all of these e-mails from people going, “Congratulations on your anniversary. I hope you’re doing well.” I got 20 e-mails that said exactly the same thing, and I know it’s automation because 20 people did not thank me for an anniversary that I know nothing about the same way. Verbatim, character to character. So whenever you can humanize or personalize your social media, it’s just going to add to the credibility that stands behind it, and that’s going to make people like and trust you a lot more than if you use automation.

SG: Right, ’cause social media is meant to be social, and it’s all about you and your company culture and you need to have that portrayed through. So if you’re totally automated, take yourself out of the equation, it’s going to get really boring really fast.

RP: Well, you just ruined my life, man. I thought I could just jump on Twitter, get a bunch of new clients, open up an Instagram, post random pictures, get more clients. But anyhow, that doesn’t work. We’re out of time, but that wraps up. There are seven different ways that you can use Twitter, recommend choosing just one or two. You don’t have to tackle all seven, especially if you’re kind of getting your toes wet in Twitter. Just start with one or two and get used to it. Incorporate it into your daily routine. And once you feel comfortable with that, come back to this episode and go ahead and add another layer and another layer, so by the end of the year, you’ll be that much more proficient using Twitter. Sarah, do you have any departing words?

SG: I don’t. Just take it one step at a time, like always in social media. If there’s only one of these seven that you can do now, just do the one, and then later work into the next one.

RP: Alright, awesome. That’s it, everybody, for Social Media Wednesday. We will see you here next week, same place, same time, on your computer screen. Have a good one.