KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- Twitter is a great platform for those that don’t consider themselves a writer and it teaches you to be concise and straight to the point.
- When creating posts for multiple social media platforms, try creating one for LinkedIn first so you cut down any unnecessary characters when it comes to using the 280-character limit on Twitter.
- To comply with the new rule, a great way to share the same tweet over and over is to continue retweeting it. Doing so won’t break Twitter’s guidelines and will mean your tweet is seen by even more people.
- Whilst Twitter doesn’t want your tweets to look like spam, large scheduling tool companies have confirmed that having the same tweet going out once or twice a week will not go against Twitter’s new rules.
- If you’re not on Twitter as a business, you are missing out. If you want to connect with people in your industry, Twitter is one of the easiest platforms to do this. Even people at the top are directly on Twitter for you to connect with.
- Twitter is platform where people join to build meaningful relationships.
- You can find the people you want to reach and follow them, engagement with them and even include them in tweets you want them to see.
- When someone sends you a tweet, try sending a video reply, this way you can reply exactly as you would in person. If you don’t want to reply via video, try using images of GIFs to keep it fun!
- Twitter is all about making connections and talking to people, so you don’t need to be strict with your content. Instead, have some fun and show your personality through video.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…
As Twitter is a platform that is designed to encourage conversation, regardless of what your business does, going out there and talking to people is a great way to make valuable business connections.
HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS
- Introducing Madalyn Sklar 04:00
- What Madalyn Loves About Twitter 09:00
- Using the 280 Character Limit To Its Full Potential 11:55
- How To Be Seen On Twitter Without Breaking The New Twitter Rules 15:20
- Why Should Businesses Use Twitter 23:13
- Why You Shouldn’t Use Auto DM’s On Twitter (And How You Should Reach Out Instead) 29:00
- Using Video On Twitter To Be More Personal 31:11
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE
Transcript below
Hello, and a very warm welcome to this week's episode of the Social Media Marketing Made Simple podcast. I hope wherever you are in the world, you are having a lovely day. In this week's episode, we're going to be talking all about Twitter. Okay, if you're not a Twitter fan, please don't turn off, 'cause I promise you you're going to want to listen to this interview. I got to interview the super lovely Madalyn Sklar, and she is a huge Twitter fan, and has been for ages. She often speaks on Twitter, she does Twitter chats on Twitter … I'm going to say “Twitter” a lot in this episode, I know it. And she also has her own podcast, where obviously she talks about, you guessed it, Twitter.
Anyway, she is a font of knowledge as to why Twitter's good, why businesses should be on there, why you should actually include it within your social media and marketing strategy. Now if you've listened to me for a while, you're going to know that I actually love Twitter. I used it an awful lot. I'm not going to say I'm as active now as I have been, because I do love Instagram; I do find myself spending a lot of time doing Insta-stories, because I just particularly like that platform at the moment. However, I always go back to Twitter; I always make sure I'm still active, even if I'm not as active as I was.
I can honestly tell you, I have built my profile and found clients through Twitter. I've developed relationships, and I've had people who have seen me tweet and be active, that have then got in touch with me purely because of Twitter. When I say I love it, and it really works, I promise you it does. I'm not going to sit there and say it's the most easiest platform in the world, and I know that some of you are really put off by the style of it and the speed of it, but I urge you to listen to today's episode, and just have an open mind about whether it might be something that is worth doing in your industry.
There are definitely different industries that suit it better, or it works better for, and typically, often if you're business to business, then Twitter can be a really good platform for you to use. It's a great engagement tool, it's a great way of reaching out and speaking to people that you want to connect with, either potential customers, prospects, other people in your industry, key people … So sending people DMs through Twitter, you're able to connect with them. So I really urge you to listen to this podcast episode, even if Twitter isn't your thing.
And of course if Twitter is your thing, then you're in total luck, because Madalyn and I kind of just completely geek out on how cool it is, and how businesses should be using it, and what it's all about. I think you're going to love today's episode. She's such a lovely lady, she's so nice to talk to, and I think you're going to get lots of good advice. And actually, we got to the end of it and decided it had gone way too quick, and that we needed to do another episode, because there is still so much amazing stuff we can tell you. So in the future, hopefully that will come as well.
Introducing Madalyn Sklar
I won't keep you waiting any longer. Please welcome to the podcast, the lovely Madalyn Sklar. I am so excited to introduce the super lovely Madalyn Sklar to today's podcast episode, and also that we get to talk about Twitter. Yay! Welcome, Madalyn.
Hey Teresa, thank you so much for inviting me. I love your podcasts; I am a fan. I listen to it every week, and I'm excited to be on and talk about Twitter.
I am so pleased you're here, because we have followed each other for a little while, and I love that fact that you listen to the podcast. And you have podcasts, so you must know what it's like when someone says, “I've listened.” You get proper excited-
I do. Right? That's right.
So nice to know that you're producing this stuff, and then that someone out there is listening. But also, I love the fact that you are such a big Twitter fan. And in the social media media world at the moment, we go through trends, don't we? And there's different things that we like and don't like, and obviously Instagram is getting a lot of action at the moment which is lovely and I love it, but I've always been a big fan of Twitter. So I'm actually so excited today to talk about Twitter for a change, and hopefully turn on some of the listeners to why they want to be listening and focusing on Twitter as well.
But it would be great if we could start with just a bit of a brief history as to how you got into doing what you do, and some of the things you do, because I know you are super busy, and you have your fingers in lots of pies. So it would be great if we could let our audience know that.
I do have my finger in a lot of pies; that's really a great way of looking at it. I'm a doer; I do so many things, and it's just how I operate. I've been doing digital marketing on the internet for 22 years, since 1996, which just blows me away that I've been doing this so long. But I saw what was going to become the power of the internet. I just saw it early on, and I actually was one of the very first web designers in Houston, Texas, where I live. And just followed my dream of being an entrepreneur, and I just love it.
Fast forward to today, and I help businesses, I help solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, people of all types and sizes with their social media, but really focused on Twitter. Twitter's just one of those things that gets laughed out, and so I made it my mission to really help people understand how to use Twitter, because people say, “I know how to use Twitter.” But there's so much of the … You don't know what you don't know. There's so many things that Twitter can do that makes it way more fun, and way more helpful in your business. So I'm hoping that some of the things that I share today will help your listeners get fired up about using Twitter and making it work better for their business.
That's awesome, and like you said it's interesting, because I think sometimes people just think they know these platforms. Because they might have had a bit of personal use on them, and they've sent a tweet, and therefore they think they know what it is. But actually often hidden within all these platforms, are so many good things, and also ways in which you can use it to make such a difference. But I can't believe you've been doing online marketing for that long. It almost sounds like the internet wasn't around. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes I think because this is such a new industry, you get used to it being five, 10 years … But to be doing it that long, and to jump on it and to recognise that this was going to be big, you must have so much experience.
Yeah, I could probably write five books about just ways of using digital marketing, and this is not just social media marketing, but there's so many other facets of how you can market your business using the internet. And for social media marketing, I've been doing that as a business for 13 years, so I've been doing-
Oh my gosh.
… social media for a very long time. I've seen so many changes in the years, from how it was in the beginning to where we are today. And I'm so excited with all the things we can do today, especially with video and live video, it's just one of my favourite things to do, and I'm always urging people to follow along. Watch what I'm doing, and do the same things, because you'll see that it can really help your business.
No, that's so awesome. And again, to think that social media marketing has been around for that long as well, that's crazy. But actually, how innovative of you to look at that back then, because I'm still having trouble convincing some people today that they need to do social media marketing, let along 10 years ago when actually people might not have thought to use this for business. So what was it at the beginning that really made you think, “Actually, Twitter's really good, and I think this could be a really good tool for businesses”?
What Madalyn Loves About Twitter
What I loved about Twitter when I first got on it … I've been on it for a little over 10 years now, is that it was short, to the point. 140 characters teaches you to be very concise. Now, that was my way of doing things as it was. I had actually … You'll love this too. I started blogging before it was cool, and before people even knew what that term meant. I started blogging in 2000, and I had a Blogger. Blogger were the big … I think it was blogger.net. And I was doing short format blog post posts. I didn't like … I'm not a writer; I didn't want to do long, wordy posts, so I tend to do more of a shorter format style. Not 140 characters, but more just no fluff, short, to the point. When I discovered Twitter, I thought, “You know, this is just right up my alley. This is the kind of writing I like. Just take that fluff out, and just tell us exactly what's going on, what's on your mind, or what do you want to share with us.”
So I immediately fell in love, and I also loved the real time aspect of it. I just loved everything about it; I thought it was a cool tool to use for business.
Do you think then … There's been a lot of changes on every social media platform. Well, some of them change on it feels like an hourly basis, let alone on a daily basis. Where you concerned when Twitter changed their character count? Because the fact that it gave you that bit more freedom, and I agree with you, one of the things that I liked about it was that it made me get to the point. Which I can fluff easily, so getting to the point is good. How did you feel about the big character change?
Well, I'm not going to lie, I was pretty against it in the beginning. I even was on Social Media Examiner, so they have their Friday talk show, and they bring me on when it's Twitter news, Twitter-related things. And when right before they switched from the 140 to the 280, they had me come on and talk about, okay Twitter's talking about this possibly being the new change, and what are your thoughts? And you had me and Mike Stelzner, and Mike Stelzner was like, “I'm all for it,” and I was like, “I'm all against it.” And I'm not one of those that likes to get online and duke it out with people. That's not my style. But I just felt like 140 characters is what makes Twitter Twitter.
Yes, yes.
Using the 280 Character Limit To Its Full Potential
And how could they even think about wanting to change this and add, and make it 280 characters? So initially I was against it. I said, “I don't see this as being a good thing,” and then a week or two later, they did it, so okay, let me immerse myself in it, and let me see what I think, now that I can actually do it. And also my big thing was, I was worried that people were going to go crazy, and all we were going to see on Twitter were these long tweets, just tweet after tweet after tweet that was long and wordy, rather than these short, concise tweets.
Now, I read through Twitter Chats every week, and I was also concerned how this was going to affect Twitter Chats. I was thinking, “Did Twitter not think about the implications of Twitter Chats? Because my Twitter Chats are both filled with lots of people … it's very busy. I can't even see all the tweets, it moves that fast. It's just zooming by. So I thought, “Okay, if it's going to be 280 characters, how can we possibly have a great conversation when it moves very fast in the course of a one hour chat? And what I noticed, Teresa, is that for about one day, people went crazy with the 280 characters. It's like they needed to get it out of their system. It's like, “Oh my gosh, I can do this! Let's see how much fun I could have with this.”
And it's like yeah, for 24 hours, Twitter was a little crazy. And then it went right back to normal. It went right back to the way it was. People just … Sure, you would see some longer tweets, but it was primarily the shorter tweets. But what was nice about it, and I did change my mind, and said, “Okay everyone, I like it, it's good, let's have an open mind about it.” It's nice when you're typing that most perfect tweet, and you just need one more character space … And it's like, “No! Twitter, please let me do one more.” And then you have go figure out what word can you abbreviate, or where can I put an ampersand in instead of the word “and”? And that would always be frustrating, when it was one character space. So I have to say, it has been nice when you have that space for that one extra thing that you want to put in. I'm okay with it now, enough time has passed; we all see that it did not destroy Twitter.
No. That's so funny. But you're so right, because I often say to people, when they say to me about putting content on multiple platforms … Because sometimes, we have the same message … because it's a really important one, that you want to put on everything. And I say to them often that would start with LinkedIn, because that would be my longest and most wordiest post. So obviously I wouldn't abbreviate anything; it would all be very well written because it's LinkedIn, and a bit more serious.
Then I would be moving over to … I'll copy it into Facebook, and I'll lighten it up a little bit, and I'll slim it down a bit. And then I'll copy it again over to Twitter, and I literally cut everything out of it. And sometimes it's hard; when you're trying to craft something, like you said, it's not that you need another six paragraphs, you literally just need another few characters. And then you're having to remove any punctuation, or remove any long-form letters and think, “How can I make that smaller?” So I quite like the way it challenged you, actually; I think it makes me laugh a bit.
How To Be Seen On Twitter Without Breaking The New Twitter Rules
Obviously, that was a huge change in Twitter's world. And then while we're talking about changes as it's just come into my mind, the first problem I have when I talk to people about Twitter, or the first thing they tell me is it's too fast. And when I tell them how much you need to be present in order to be seen in Twitter, they kind of go, “I can't keep up with that, because how can do four, five, six tweets a day or whatever it might be?” And then of course, Twitter changed its rules, and they stopped the … or they changed the API didn't they, so that people couldn't repeat content. Which, I'm really interested to get your take on this. I was meant to give you my take, but let me take your take first [crosstalk 00:15:35].
Okay, so earlier this year in 2018, Twitter made this really big deal about how you cannot have duplicate tweets, and they had something where they were very specific, and some things that were a little grey. So the specific was if you have multiple Twitter accounts, and a lot of people are doing this … Let's say you use … We'll use Buffer as an example. So you host, or you run, multiple Twitter accounts. And this can be common, say, for a radio station or some big company that has little companies underneath them. There's so many different ways this was being done. So let's say you're in charge of their social media, and part of your strategy is that you do one tweet, but you put 'em on all the accounts. And they get scheduled to all go out together. Twitter says, “No, you cannot do that any more.” It can only be one account for a tweet. But what you can do is retweet it … take that tweet, and retweet it from the other accounts. So that was their work-around, is just do that.
Now of course, if you're doing this live, in real time, then you can do whatever you want. But this was to combat scheduling and basically spamming Twitter with just … ‘Cause you could go crazy with the scheduling and there are tools out there that you can just put on autopilot that can just go insanely crazy. And so they wanted to do away with that. I was great with that. I thought, “Okay, some people, some social media marketers that are running these big accounts, multiple big accounts, their work is going to change, because they're going to have to do this individually. They can't just go schedule these the way they were.
Then the other thing, and this was interesting, they said when you do a tweet, they don't want you basically duplicating that same tweet, because they don't want stuff to … Because that was another problem; people put it on autopilot, and the same stuff goes out over and over and over and over. But I'm talking like, every hour or every day. Where it gets a little grey in there is that they did not say … I mean, they kind of said, “You can't do this,” but they didn't say it. It got a little strange. Like okay, what is the exact … I want to know for sure, what can we do, what can we not do? Because the way it was worded, it wasn't super clear like, well can you? Certainly they can't have you not do a same tweet ever ever ever. Like, okay, the tweet I put out … ‘Cause I run Twitter Chats … I have some tweets that are identical that I do every week, like when we're 30 minutes out, there's a tweet that says, “Hey, join us in 30 minutes for our awesome Twitter Chat with so-and-so.” I'm going to do that every week, and so I'm like, “Oh, can I not do that any more?”
So I went and talked to several CEOs of big third party tools, people that I know. So I talked to Emeric Ernoult, who's the CEO of AgoraPulse, and I talked to Tim Fargo, the CEO of Social Jukebox. So they run these big third party tools that do all these things. And I asked them, “Okay, what exactly can we do and not do, because I need to know. I schedule these tweets with y'all. Some of them are on autopilot, some of them are going to duplicate, but it'll be once a week. Would that be okay?” They both came back with the same thing. They both said, “It's okay to do it, as long as you have at least three days in between. Like, don't do the same tweet over and over and over. But, you're doing it once a week, you should be fine. We've talked to Twitter; this is our understanding.”
They both said the exact same thing to me, so I left it as is. So I've got tweets that go out, duplicate tweets every week, and they're not spammy, they're just part of my strategy, because otherwise I'd be doing it manually. No problem; I've not gotten into any trouble. It's worked out just fine.
Do you know what? That is so good to talk about. I … Like you, I'd looked at this, and there was a whole part of me that went, “This is good,” because oh, boy you've seen those accounts that literally throw out the same rubbish. And it's not just every hour, it's almost every few minutes some of them are. And it's nonsense; it's not anything of any value, and so that I was totally on board about, and I was like, “Yeah, they need to stop that.”
However, when you do social media for people, and I've got one client … Well, there's a couple I used to do it with, but one in particular that I can think of. They have a product that they sell, a gym product, and we do the social media for them, and basically we've been doing it for so long, and we'd got so many tweets, like so many different bits of content, that I felt that let's say they had over a 100 bits of content we'd created for them. Well, if I'm putting that in a scheduling tool, and saying to it, “Send a tweet two, three times a day,” let's say, and then some natural stuff in between, and I've got a 100 bits of content, that's not repeating for days and days, and the chances of anybody ever thinking, “How many times have I seen that tweet?” are slim to none, so …
And again, like you, I've got content … If you've got a really good blog post, or if you've got a really good podcast episode, I want that post to go out-
Absolutely.
… I don't know, every other week or once a month, or … So I was a little bit frustrated by it, because I just thought, “I totally get why they've done it, but actually there are some good things that we would use this for,” and therefore I was a little bit like, “Oh, okay, that's not great.” Because then suddenly it made, or it seemed much harder work, because you were having to try and either change it up, or you were having to do it all by hand, and I know that social media is always best done when you're kind of natural, and … But of course, in reality, especially on something like Twitter, being able to have some stuff scheduled will just take the load off a bit, won't it?
Oh yeah, the best thing about tools is that it can save you time and save you money, right? So I'm a huge fan and proponent of tools, because they're so useful. And so going back to those two tools I mentioned, AgoraPulse and Social Jukebox, they help me tremendously. AgoraPulse has it set up so that I can do a once and done. So when I have the tweets that I promote every week for my TwitterSmarter chat every Thursday afternoon, I have a handful of tweets that is the same thing, it's reminders or something during the chat … We do an icebreaker. We do all kinds of things, leading up to the actual questions, so I'm able to use AgoraPulse, to just have it in there at the same exact time every week, no problem. And it's great that we have that ability, because if I had to do that manually, or had to hire a VA to do it for me, that's why it saves time and money to have this available.
Absolutely. I'm really interested then … If someone was to come to you and say, “I don't know anything about Twitter.” And I still get this a lot. There are lots of people who literally just can't even look in that direction. But if someone was to come to you and say, “Okay, I'm a business. Why should I look at Twitter? Or what's so good about Twitter?” What would you say to me?
Why Should Businesses Use Twitter
Oh my gosh. I'd be like, “Okay, you are definitely missing out if you're not on Twitter, because there's so many great things you can do. There's so many opportunities to meet people.” I always say, “If you want to connect with people in your industry, even the top, top people, you can do it on Twitter.” So for example, my TwitterSmarter podcast, I launched it three years ago, and my plan was to launch on June 1st, 2015. That was my goal. This was a few months out, and I'm like, “Okay, how am I going … Let me make a list of all the …” And I was shooting for the stars. Pat Flynn, who was your first interview on this awesome podcast, he was my first interview on that podcast. I love that. I love that we share that.
Yeah, that's so good.
I reached out to him on Twitter. And I just asked. I asked would he come on my podcast, and he said yes. And I asked … I mean, I got on a roll. None of them knew me yet. I had made a transition from being in the music business, where I was top in the field for social media and digital marketing, but I wanted to get more widely known in social media, and it started with this pivot by having this podcast, and reaching out to all these people. They all know who I am now, three years later, but back then … I reached out to [Mari 00:24:51] Smith, Kim [Gars 00:24:54], Mark [Schaffer 00:24:54] … These are the who's who of social media marketing, and they all said yes, and all came on my podcast, and it was all done through Twitter. All of these were from a tweet.
And Twitter works, it really works, because there's no way I could go onto, say, Instagram or Facebook and reach out to Mari Smith, and say, “Hey, I'd like to have you on my podcast.” Maybe there's a chance, but I feel like you have a greater chance on Twitter, because Twitter is just this platform where people get on there and build relationships and connect in a way that's different from the other platforms. On Facebook, it feels more personal. It feels like people are [inaudible 00:25:40]. If someone comes and messages you there, you feel like they're invading your space if you don't know them.
Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think it's a much more personal platform that we use, and also for a business to try and reach out to a person, that's near on impossible on Facebook. That just isn't something that's physically set up for it to do, whereas for me, Twitter has always been the engagement tool. It's always been the thing, that if you wanna speak to someone, you wanna connect to someone … and that's what was so good about it, and is still so good about it, that actually you can find that person, and include them in a tweet or follow them or like their stuff, or comment on a tweet, and actually one thing that people on Twitter love, is people responding to them, 'cause that's the whole point.
That's right.
We all put stuff on social media for people to come back to us, so no one is ever going to be cross or annoyed by you ever commenting on one of their tweets, or-
Not ever.
… ever engaging with them, are they?
No, because the thing is, like you were saying before with Facebook, if it's our personal, we feel like they're invading our space. If it's the business account, well that's usually run by someone in the business, not the top person. And when you go onto the top person's Twitter profile, they are most likely doing it themselves, because people learn very early on with Twitter, that you can't have your assistant do it for you. It just doesn't work that way. It has to be your voice, and so that's one of the things that makes Twitter so great, and people expect just anyone to pop in and introduce themselves and start talking to you. It's a great way to build relationships.
I'm amazed at all of the big name people I've reached out to on Twitter, first connected with on Twitter, to do some … invite them to do something with me, and always getting that yes. Whereas you do it on LinkedIn, and it can be crickets, right? It's like “Hello, is anybody there?”
Yes.
Because I get so much spam on LinkedIn, I have a hard time taking anyone seriously when they message me on LinkedIn, because it's been so spammy for me.
Yeah, and it's funny, there's still an occasional … A couple of people on Twitter who send out … or mention someone in their tweet, and then when you go and have a look at replies and mentions, it's basically the same tweet. And it's like, that effort alone is crazy effort. Like, what are you doing? But like you said, I often do get spam through other places, and actually one of my worst is Instagram. I get a lot of DM spam through there.
That's interesting. Okay.
I get loads of … You're going to laugh. Honestly, it's hilarious. I get loads of offers from male ex-military widows.
I've heard you talk about this on your podcast.
[crosstalk 00:28:37].
That is the craziest thing.
Absolutely.
How did that happen?
I don't know. But what's really funny, it's like, just look at my profile. A, I'm married, and he's in the military, so it's like I'm pretty covered on that stakes, thanks very much. But no, it's funny, 'cause I don't often get spam as such on Twitter, which is interesting. One thing that I do still get a bit of, but not as much as we used to … and I don't know whether you've found that this has changed, is the auto message when you follow someone.
Why You Shouldn’t Use Auto DM’s On Twitter (And How You Should Reach Out Instead)
The auto DMs.
Yeah, so do you … I feel like they've actually calmed down a bit. What about you?
They have calmed down. Twitter has finally put an end to it. They do not allow it. There's some services that you could turn it on, and it would do it for you, and it was terrible. It really made DMs almost impossible for so many people, and when I interviewed Mari Smith several years ago for the podcast, she was talking about how her DM was just useless to her because it was just overrun with those auto DMs. So I'm so happy that Twitter has put an end to it, so we shouldn't see very much. If you are seeing it, it means someone is doing it manually, which is a lot of work. But there's just no place for it there. Why would someone come on that doesn't know you, send you a private DM and say … and so many of mine were, “Hey, come follow me on LinkedIn.” It's like, “Yeah, I'm on Twitter. I don't want to go to your LinkedIn. Like, let's chat here.” It just made no sense, but these marketers trying to get you to buy something of theirs, and you don't even know who they are. It's like, “Let's go back to social media and marketing 101. Build relationships first.” Twitter's a platform that will help you do it easily and quickly. That's what makes it great.
I often find that when people are talking to me about their social media platforms, they will say to me … They won't know how to respond to someone, so they'll say, when people message them or tweet them and say, “This is cool,” or “Morning” or whatever … and they'd say to me, “What do I say back?” And it's like, “If you were talking to another human being face to face-“
Exactly.
“… what would you say?”
Right.
That's what you [crosstalk 00:30:56].
Using Video On Twitter To Be More Personal
Have a conversation, 'cause that's what it's all about. It's having a conversation, and I definitely want to mention one of the things that I've been doing that's been super successful, is what I call video replies. And so when someone sends you a tweet, they're tagging you. So for me, they're putting “@MadalynSklar” in the tweet. And an example of one that I get a lot is when people listen to my podcast … I'm sure you get these too. They say, “Hey, @MadalynSklar, I love your TwitterSmarter podcast. Thank you for sharing all this information. I'm learning a lot.” I get a lot of those. And so how would you reply? Well like you said, how would you reply if it was in person? That's the best way to talk about it.
The typical is reply back … “I [inaudible 00:31:40] thank you very much, appreciate …” I really got into gifs, so I use gifs a lot.
I love it.
Looooove gifs. And there's so many great ones. They're so easy to do. For those of you listening, if you've never done a gif, when you're doing that reply or any tweet you're putting out there, click on the little gif button and you can search … If I just wanted to do one that says Hi or Hello, I just type in “Hi” and then a whole bunch of 'em come up, and you just pick the one you want. You can also make your own, and I have lots of colleagues that are doing that, and Andrew and Pete have done that very successfully, over on Giphy, and that's a fun way, is just personalise it with your own.
What I do is I go a step further. I get in the habit of doing what I call video replies. And so when people are tweeting me, like that example about my podcast, what I like to do … And it's when you have time, and just try to encourage people to maybe take some time once a week, and spend a little time doing this. Go through your notification, and go look at all the tweets that are sent out to you, and reply back with a video. And it's mobile only; you can only do it from your phone, you gotta be in the Twitter mobile app.
So let's say you get that Twitter, and you wanna reply back and thank that person, when you're in there replying, hit the camera button. And so for iPhone and Android you gotta hit the little icon to get to your photos, which then opens up the camera, and then you wanna click on the video camera. And then point it at you, and just talk. And I know for a lot of people, they get a little paralysed with this. They're a little nervous, but I tell you what, I have found this to be one of the best ways to connect with people, because number one, it's unexpected. They're not expecting you to reply back with a video for them.
Gary Vaynerchuk started doing this a few years ago when Twitter video first started, when they turned on the video camera for us, to do our tweets. And could you imagine getting a reply from the Gary Vaynerchuk?
Could you imagine?
Well, I did. Twice. Two times he did that, where it was just real quick like, “Hey, thanks Madalyn.” But to have him spend a moment, and say my name in a tweet on video was amazing.
How cool is that?
And so I try to get in the habit of spending some time each week replying to tweets with a video, and just being real, being honest. Instead of typing it, just say what I would normally type, and just be sincere. And I tell you Teresa, I can't tell you how many times people have said to me, “Madalyn, I remember that first time we connected on Twitter, and you sent me that video. And I still remember how that made me feel.” And it's like, Oh my gosh.
That's so cool.
That's amazing.
And what you said: it's so unexpected, it's so nice as a response. It's so personal, and it's bringing that face to face together, isn't it, which I think … You and I spoke about this briefly before we got on the podcast, but people don't often expect Twitter and video to go hand in hand. They know Instagram stories are all video, they know about doing Facebook lives, but actually Twitter have all the functionality that everyone else does. Okay, they don't have amazing face filters, and I do love a face filter, especially when I'm jet lagged and yeah, tired, but Twitter have got all these facilities, and yet people don't seem to use them, which means you stand out even more. And surely that's just gotta be a good thing.
Absolutely. That's why I'm always preaching to everyone … I've been on this mission to get them to do these video replies. I even started a hashtag last year: #videoreplyday.
Awesome.
And I actually made Tuesday … All right, Tuesdays, let's have video reply day and let's get in the habit of just taking some time to reply to tweets with a video or just send out tweets. Go look at people you wanna meet, and just send them a video, and just talk. Just start a conversation. They're going to be so blown away, and with Twitter … And you're so right, people just don't know they can do this. We do video everywhere. We do it on Instagram Stories all the time. We do Snapchat, we do Facebook … And on Twitter, we can do it as well, only on the phone. Tap on the video button and do it. You can do up to two minutes and 20 seconds, so there is a limit to how much you can do.
You can upload videos on desktop, so you can upload videos, and there's actually a feature … probably don't have time to get into today, and I could talk forever about it … it's called Media Studio.
Okay. [crosstalk 00:36:26].
And it's Media Studio, it's a really cool feature through Twitter, where you can upload your videos and you can actually put metadata into it. So you can have a bolded headline and a description, and you can put a call to action and have it so that when people click on the video, you can take them somewhere.
That's really good. Such a good tool.
Yeah.
And I will to that in the show notes, 'cause that sounds amazing, that tool. The other thing I loved about the video that you can do on your phone, it's a … and if it's still the same; I haven't done one for a little while actually, so this could be different … but you press and hold and take your thumb off, and it stops recording. And then you can do it again and take your thumb off. And for me, that's actually really good, because sometimes you don't wanna feel like you've just got to do a whole load of recording, because you can guarantee … Well, I take about four, five attempts on every Insta story I do, so if it could not do it in a whole one, that would be great. So I quite liked that functionality, and especially if you wanted to show someone something or change the camera angle or whatever, that's really cool, isn't it? I think that's a nice little … almost like a little bit of editing within the Twitter app itself, which is cool.
Absolutely. That is a cool feature in there. And you can also have a video you've already recorded, and upload it from your phone as well. When you were talking about liking to do those face filters, like, say, on Instagram, one of the things that I will sometimes do … You know how on Instagram Stories, say you do five of 'em together, and it's like this perfect story, and you can download what you have up there as one video. So sometimes I will do that, 'cause there'll be times where when I'm walking my dog Max and I'm doing my Instagram stories, I'll maybe share some Twitter tips. I know you're big with sharing-
Yes.
… social media tips, which I love. So I can string them all together, download it as one, and then I could go upload it over onto Twitter, and I'll usually just do it through my phone, and just upload it up there. So it's not limited to just recording a video. We can also take something we already have and upload it. So what I'll do, is take that one video from Instagram Stories, tweet it out and say, “Hey, I'm also doing video on Instagram Stories, come follow me on my Instagram.” So I like to do a lot of cross-promotion like that.
Yes. And I think that's great, 'cause again, if you are more natural, prefer do through an Instagram video then great … do your stories on there, but like you said, download them to your phone, and upload them to Twitter, and do it that way, and just mix up that content. It's great. And also, I think often when people think they need to put content out there, they're thinking of content creation. But actually for me with Twitter, it doesn't need to be that strict, does it? Because it's a conversation. So it doesn't need to be, “You've gotta do six posts that are all very curated.”
Right.
Half of those posts could be having conversations with other people.
Exactly. That's what I love about Twitter. It's a great place for conversation. It's why I love hosting Twitter chats. I love bringing people together for an hour to have … And this is like-minded people. Let's have a conversation revolving around a topic like with my TwitterSmarter, we talk about different things with Twitter marketing. So we have a very specific group of people that come for that. And then my other chat, SocialROI, which I run for a third party tool called ManageFlitter, and we talk about just everything social media, and how we can get that ROI out of it. We have these great conversations. It brings a very specific audience of like-minded people, and through that process, you end up becoming friends with a lot of these people. You end up having this whole list of new colleagues and people to collaborate with. I've done a lot of collaborations with people I've met through these chats.
Yeah. And I love that, because I've done exactly the same. There are … And when you tell people this, they think you're weird. But there are people who [crosstalk 00:40:25] through Twitter, who we're now great friends, or I've then physically met them and done stuff with them or whatever, and actually, I just love that. I love the fact that you can reach out to people who do something similar to what you do or like the same things you like, or are in the same industry, and suddenly you can open yourself up to a new world. It's a great tool, and you've got some great resources out there, some great podcasts, and all the different stuff you're doing. So I think if anybody is at all interested in wanting to know more about Twitter, then you are the person that springs to mind when I think Twitter. So you are definitely-
Thank you.
… the place to go if people wanna find out more. Thank you so much for being on, Madalyn. I've had such a nice chat, and like I said, i love talking about Twitter. It is one of my favourites, and I do forget about it, so you've reinvigorated me-
Yay!
… to go and send a tweet now, and say that we've just [crosstalk 00:41:20]-
With a video.
With a video. I'm going to do that. And I'm going to tweet you and say that we've just recorded this on [crosstalk 00:41:27].
And then I'm going to do a video reply to your tweet.
Love it. I love.
And I think what the listeners should do is come find us on Twitter and reply to one of our tweets and start a con- … Like when this episode comes out, I would love for the listeners to go to your profile, Teresa and go and reply. I would love everybody to reply to that tweet, with a video, and tag me, 'cause I wanna get in on this, and we could actually start a chain, and just start connecting with a bunch of your listeners through video on Twitter.
That's it.
And they're going to be like, “I never thought of having a video chat with people on Twitter.”
On Twitter. They did not. I love it. Thank you so much, Madalyn, and thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been ace.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Do you know what? I loved doing that interview. She's such a lovely lady. It was so nice to talk to her, and so nice to hear her passion for Twitter, because often, especially when we go to Social Media Marketing World, or go to conferences, people wanna talk about the cool and latest trends and the latest things. And therefore often, some of the key platforms that are still amazing get completely left on the shelf. No one wants to talk about it, no one's interested about it. So it was great to chat to her to see how she uses it for her business, why she thinks it's good for other people's businesses.
I particularly liked the way that she connected with people in the early days through Twitter to get podcast guests. What a great idea, what a great thing to do. And actually, I've done something similar on Instagram, so it's a real personal way in order to engage with someone that isn't going to their emails, or actually connecting with them in a way that's completely intrusive. For me, doing a DM through Twitter is not intrusive at all; it's quite a nice, easy way to have a conversation with someone.
Also I loved the way that she talked about connecting and engaging and responses on Twitter, the fact that no one minds you connecting with them. No one minds you responding to their tweets, because that's the whole point. People put things on social media in order for someone to respond to them. To be able to do that on Twitter and connect with them, no one is ever going to mind you reaching out. If you retweet my things, I am never going to have a problem with that. If you talk to me on Twitter, I'm again never going to have a problem with that, so it's a great way to reach out to people through their social media platform.
I think we said at the end that there was just so much to talk about, we didn't seem to get as much in as we wanted to. It often happens like that when I'm recording the interviews. I have a rough idea of what I want us to cover, but of course it depends. I try and keep really flexible in terms of how the conversation's going, so for me in this one, it was so lovely chatting about things. We were talking about the updates and the changes; that was really important. Also how she felt about the character numbers going up; I loved her story on that, and her honesty around it. The interviews never quite answer all the questions I've got, because we get sidetracked. But I like that, and I think that's a really hopefully nice, natural way for us to do the podcast. Let me know. See what you think. And make sure you do what she said, make sure that you come and find us on Twitter, and tell us what you think of the episode, 'cause we would love to hear from you. Both of us would.
Okay. I hope you enjoyed this episode. As always, the show notes have all her details. I've linked up to everything there; all her accounts, and obviously her Twitter account. Please go and check that out; that's at teresaheathwareing.com/41thenumbers (sic). As always as well, I love to hear what your ideas and thoughts are. I'm not sat here thinking that me and my guests and … When I do solo episodes, we have all the answers, 'cause we don't. And actually, we have some great feedback from people of new and innovative ways that they're using these platforms. I would love to hear from you. If you're using Twitter, and there are some particular things that you're doing that are working really for you, please come and tell me. Let's share those ideas. I would love to hear from you.
That's all from me in this episode. I hope you have a great week, and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.
