Hey, good morning, internet fans! It’s Ryan Perry with Simple Biz Support. It is Wednesday, April 15. Happy Tax Day. I hope everybody is watching this episode instead of paying your taxes today. Well, I paid mine yesterday. We’re going to talk about Twitter and video. And, on the other side, I have Sarah Giometti, the founder of Provaro Marketing. Good morning, Sarah.

Good morning, Ryan. How are you?

RP: I’m doing wonderful today. Thank you. And, yourself?

SG: I’m doing fabulous.

RP: Very cool. We kind of played with this the other day, is you can actually now on-the-fly, through your mobile device share video on Twitter.

SG: You can. There’s a relatively new feature which will make, like we predicted earlier this year, video is going to be huge in 2015, and all of the platforms just keep proving us right.

RP: Yeah. You know what? I think it’s great because, oh gosh, I forget the exact number, but one minute of video is worth like 1,000,000 words or something like that. So, what will be interesting is that Twitter was all about really having a focused message, because you’re only allowed 140 characters. And therefore, you had to really think about what you were going to say. Now, that we can incorporate video, it’ll be interesting how that effects the way people interact and engage on Twitter.

SG: Yeah. It’s going to be really interesting, ’cause you can get really creative with it. I know you and I were just playing with it yesterday in the office, but there’s a lot of things that you can do with it for your business that can get engagement. You can be really creative with it. You get 30 seconds, which is, outside of Facebook, is the longest that any of the platforms allowed. I know Vine is around seven seconds, Instagram I think is 15-16 seconds. And so, Twitter is allowing you to do 30 seconds, which is a pretty good amount of time for an on-the-fly video for social media. And, for a platform that moves so fast, 30 seconds is kind of a long time on Twitter.

RP: Right. It’s very long. And, I’ve already seen where some of the major brands, now major brands, 30 seconds, that’s commercial time on TV. So, they can easily incorporate using commercials through Twitter. So, it’ll be interesting.

SG: Yeah, it’ll…

[chuckle] I know. I’m having my helper come turn my light on, because I forgot to do it. So, yeah, commercial time, they’re used to 30 seconds on TV. So hopefully, they don’t use this 30 second video like commercial time on TV. Because social media does work so differently that you really don’t want to just put out a 30 second promotional commercial because, especially with the younger crowds, we all watch our TV on Netflix and Hulu, or whatever ID. Like, I don’t even know when most of my shows are on, everything’s set to DVR, and I fast forward through all the commercials, because I don’t want to be sold to while I’m watching TV. So, hopefully, the bigger brands realize this so they’re not just putting their commercials out there. And so, I’d say to smaller businesses too, “This is not your opportunity to put out a 30 second commercial like you would on TV or you wish you could do on TV, but you can’t really afford because it’s not in the budget.”

RP: Right…

SG: You want to…

RP: I was going to say, what’s really neat about it though for me, because I’m a huge activist, I guess. I’m very proactive about video. Is that you can engage through word-sharing content. But now, again, if you’re the small business owner and you’re trying to engage in a community, being able to actually see and hear the person behind the Twitter icon is going to be huge. And I think, if you use it correctly and engage with your audience in the appropriate way on the platform of Twitter, this is a huge opportunity for people to really increase their engagement, increase conversion because you can increase the trust and credibility that you have by speaking directly to your audience. And to me, that’s the most powerful thing that I see as an opportunity.

SG: Absolutely. It’s that human factor that we keep talking about in a lot of our hangouts every week, that people buy from people. They don’t buy from a company. They don’t buy from a company name. They buy from people. And so, here is an opportunity on Twitter where you really haven’t had a video opportunity. Video on Twitter is relatively new. The part that we’re talking about today, the brand new part, is the record on-the-fly in the Twitter app and post immediately. You have been able to upload video to Twitter for a little bit now, but this is the on-the-fly live. So, not only can you show you, the human factor, or you and your employees, you could be at community events where other people may be there and they’re going to see that you’re doing a short video, that you’re involved in the event, involved in the community. There’s a lot of things that you can do to show that you’re doing your part in the community that will endear your future customers to you. And so, this could do… I do, I think this really big for small businesses. You’re mute.

RP: Yep. The other thing is being able to respond and reply to people quickly and easily. Especially, when I first saw this as an option, I was like, “Oh, you know. There’s a couple of people that I’ve engaged with on Twitter for some time that I’ve even talked to on the phone.” And I’m like, “How cool would it be just to get on the phone real quick. Plug in the app. Hit the little button. Hit record. And actually, send out just a quick, five-second, “Hey Joe, just wanted to say hi,” and it’s not like it wasn’t available before, it’s because you could upload video or you could link to video through YouTube, however, it’s cumbersome. So I think the real power in what they’re doing now is the convenience factor that you can see a tweet, hit Reply to that tweet, and then instead of typing in a message, just hit the Record button and just send out a quick video and it automatically uploads and sends out through Twitter. That, to me, that instant gratification that we all want these days, is the real powerful tool behind it. So besides being able to respond to people, are there any other ways that you can recommend that people start using this instant video feature on Twitter to boost their visibility and credibility?

SG: Yeah, so we’ll start with the response ’cause I think it’s bigger than just that, that you can say a lot more in 30 seconds than you can type in 140 characters. So, it’s responding to a tweet with a video instead of text is very powerful. I wasn’t sure that was clear in there, that you can now respond to a tweet with an actual live video. So, but other things you can do I mentioned earlier, events. If you’re throwing an event or you’re at an event, you can take… In the middle of the event, take a quick 30-second video, showing the event, showing how much fun it is and posting it on Twitter because it goes to… If it’s not your event, it’s your involvement in the community. If it is your event, you can show how fun it is, and the people who didn’t come are going to feel left out. In my circles we jokingly call it FOMO, Fear of Missing Out, and so people… It’ll… Want them to come… The next time you have an event, the last one was so much fun that they’re definitely not going to want to miss out on the next one.

SG: So, there’s a lot of creativity that you can do there. And then with… Always with content marketing, it’s an educational platform, too. Do you have something that needs to be put together? You can do a 30-second video showing somebody how to do something. We know that’s been very powerful on YouTube, the “how to do” videos and I have used it every time I need to tie my husband’s tie, I look it up on YouTube, because I can never remember how to do a Double Windsor knot. But this is something you can use for Twitter also, is a quick “here’s how you do this” or educational around… If someone had asked you a question, you can answer the question in video form. So you can be creative with the “how to do” videos, FAQs, educational around your product and services, even educational around your community.

SG: What things are you involved in? I know I’m doing a rotary service project on Saturday that’s actually a community-wide organization that we’re involved with, where people apply… So that’s something that I can tweet about, that I’m doing community service on… Next Saturday, not this Saturday… Just in case anybody wants to look it up, in Sonoma County. But those are things that you can do while you’re out in the community, not necessarily what your business, but what you’re doing because you’re the business owner, you are the business. Even if you have employees, even if you’ve got 20-30 employees, you’re still your business. I think… Let’s see… Event, out in the community, education. User-generated content is another one that would be really great. Ask your fans, or your followers, your customers, “Send me a short video on Twitter of you using our product” or being creative, whatever, run a contest for user-generated content. You can get really creative with this. And this does apply to all of the platforms. It just happens to be really new on Twitter and to do it live, while you’re out doing stuff is really powerful.

RP: Right, the spontaneousness of it is pretty cool. So I guess for us, we could actually say, “Hey Twitter fans, shoot a quick video and let us know what you’d like to know more about social media,” because we do these episodes every single week and the idea is to educate people on what’s coming out new, different ways of working with social media to improve their branding and ultimately the bottom line, so what questions do you have for us that we could answer in one of these Social Media Wednesday episodes.

SG: Yeah, that is a fabulous idea, Ryan! [chuckle] Get a little help from the people who are listening to this. Let us know what you want to know ’cause we definitely… We’re here to educate you, and we try to stay on what’s new, what will help the small businesses. The things that we are seeing in our businesses and how we’re helping our clients are the themes that we’ve picked for these hangouts, but we can definitely run a user-generated contest, let us know what you want, send us videos. ‘Cause it also creates engagement on Twitter by asking people for their opinion and on Twitter, people really, really love to give their opinion. It’s not always great, but they do like to do it. So use it in creative ways like that, it’s great.

RP: Alright, perfect. So, if you haven’t checked it out yet, just check your mobile device. Now the one thing I will let you know that’s a little… You have to get used to, I’m not going to actually bring it up ’cause it would be hard to see, but if you want to actually shoot video, you have to hold the button down and it probably takes about half a second before it actually engages, and then when you’re done recording, just let go and it’ll stop recording. So you might want to kinda play with it a couple of times. The nice thing is, it is digital; if you don’t like it just go back and delete it. Even though it does get posted into the live feed, you can still go through your feed and delete posts. With that being said, any closing comments?

SG: I think just be creative with it. And if you’re not already on Twitter, don’t feel like you have to go jump on it right now. Still focus on whatever platform that you’ve been focusing on so far. But if you’ve been focusing on Twitter, or you, and you’ve already have been engaging and you’re used to it, then definitely play around with it. Have fun some. That’s a big part about social media is have some fun, show your character, show who you are. Being a little goofy on there, people will probably forgive it, and enjoy it. Be creative.

RP: Alright, perfect. I like that. With that being said, I think this episode is at an end. But we do have something great and fabulous lined up for you next week as always. We don’t know what it is, we just know it’s going to be great and fabulous, though. So Sarah, as always I appreciate your time and energy that you put into these weekly episodes.

SG: Thank you, Ryan. It’s always a pleasure to be here.

RP: Alright. We’ll see you next week. Bye.

SG: Alright, bye.