How to Create and Engage a Thriving Twitter Community

Transcript for How to Create and Engage a Thriving Twitter Community

To learn more about MeetEdgar's webinar schedule and to catch us streaming live, visit MeetEdgar Live Webinars.All righty. Thank you all so much for joining the webinar today where we're going to chat a little bit about how to create a thriving Twitter community. It is 10:00 AM Pacific Time, 1:00 PM Eastern Time, which means we're going to go ahead and get started here. Like I said, we are going to be having a lot of really fun chats going on with these webinars, so make sure that you reach out to each other, as well as my colleague, Jess over in the chat box on the right as we do get started here. Essentially today, we wanted to focusA little bit on Twitter just because it is one of the major networks that Edgar supports in order to get your consistent updates out to your followers.For those of you who don't know, we do love to give away swag in these webinars, so make sure that as you're participating, you're helping each other out asking questions, and Jess is going to randomly pick someone from the chat box over there in order to get some awesome Edgar swag to wear with pride out there in the world, so get those questions not only to help each other out, but also for a chance to win that Edgar swag. Cool. For those of you who are new and don't know about Edgar, we are a social media automation tool that helps really make sure your automation and your updates that you're putting out in the social media world provide a really nice and strong, robust, consistent following for your followers to be able to really get to know your brand. Here at MeetEdgar, it was developed by our founder, Laura basically off of a lot of the challenges that you all face as small business owners. She had an education business in which she was finding it hard to keep up with all the spreadsheets that she had to market her social media on.She had to really make sure that she was recycling all of this hard work she was putting into her videos, her blog posts, so she developed this tool, Edgar to help out with it. The cool thing about it, it is really a partnership. We are all in this together, really trying to make sure that we're staying up with social media trends, and really trying to make sure that we're helping each other out, which is one of the reasons we really do love giving these webinars. Social media changes so quickly, and MeetEdgar does like to stay on the top of that, so Twitter specifically.Everyone's community is a little bit different on social media. We definitely want to stress there's no hard and fast rules, no magic kind of pill in order to make sure that your Twitter, your Facebook, your LinkedIn marketing is perfect compared to everyone else's, so taking the time to pull out your pencil today and write down some actionable things that you can do for your specific community. We really want to stress that you need to learn about your community. Create objectives that are really going to guide your behavior, and watch how your community responds over time.These things that are really harped into people are so, so important, so everything that we're going through here today, I want you to filter through the lens of your business goals and objectives. Not necessarily MeetEdgar's, while there are some rules that help to make Twitter marketing really successful.Just take a few minutes at the end of this webinar to really write down practical ways that your audience can benefit from these tips. Twitter really is one of the trickier marketplaces because it's so fast-paced, and one of the biggest networks in the world.Our job as marketers is to really cut through this down to reach our audience, to build trust with them with their technologies, and to really authentically connect with our community. Where this starts out is actually going to be internally. Let's make sure that you guys have such a strong brand voice that the messages that you're putting out there are fresh, and original, and convey your brand's messages to really reflect your core values, and most importantly, to resonate with your audience in a personal way.How this starts is making sure everyone internally in your company has a connection to those core values. This can be something as simple as saying, "Hey, who's doing my social media? Who's going to go ahead and get all these updates out there? What am I calling them? Am I just calling them my 'Virtual assistant', or am I calling them my 'Social media manager'?"Consider changing that internal language to something like a community manager, or to some reason, to give them an empowered vision that their job is to foster in community within your network, and to really make sure your core values as a business, showing through to your members, showing through to your followers so they feel that sort of brand affinity that is going to be so important during social media marketing. Cool. Jumping in here, once you do get your language down and all of your employees are feeling nice and empowered for social media, we want you to always remember that Twitter is where you go to listen as much as you speak. This is social media, and this is going to be a really strong emphasis on the social part.One of the things I like to do as a test is thinking every tweet you're sending out there, think of it like a dinner party conversation.Doing things like opening up about personal content, sharing your story so your community wants to share theirs back, it's all about that human to human connection. It's not a business to business transaction on Twitter. It's humans talking to each other, and this platform might have been developed on this technology, but who gets Twitter chats going? Who actually invented the hashtag?It's the users who have actually done this, and put their personality, and put their likes and interests in there, so make sure you're listening.Make sure that you think, "When I go to a dinner party, how would I talk to someone about my business?", and use that colloquial language in order to connect in a really awesome way with your followers. Next, creating partnerships. Influencer marketing, I'm sure you all know is more important than ever. You need to let people in your community know that you are a voice in your niche who is an expert. People want to really love your perspective. They want to be able to have your thoughts.They want to be able to retweet you, so the goal is not to write that exact same content over and over. It's to really provide a fresh perspective on the same ideas within your community. Make sure that your content is going above and beyond what your competitors are providing, making sure that your successful posts are explained in a really kind of actionable tutorial, using these partnerships to get all your information out there to their communities, and really making sure you're fostering again that human to human connection.Last throughout this entire webinar, we're going to go back to this idea that Twitter is where you go to add value. You can answer questions, share information, and be a force for really good in the community if you're providing value, basing your content strategy on what your audience wants and needs, and you are guaranteed results that way.The purpose of every piece of content should be able to be something that your community wants to share. If there's not a quote, or if you want to take a little extra time to think about how you can frame an article to reflect to your business's viewpoints, all of this stuff should be filtered through this lens of, "How is someone getting value from this?" Cool. As we start out here, before we go into too much more content strategy, let's chat a little bit about the traditional ways of finding followers, as well as some new ideas that you can get into. We do like to say, "Start small and build over time."For example, you might set an initial objective to find 10 or 20 followers a week, going out there and making sure that you're looking in your industry, your niche to see what the other voices are saying, and going ahead and following them, talking to them. If you're providing value in that way, they'll probably follow you back. That's like a really great technological networking event. The other things you can do is go out to meet-ups, go to networking events, do all of these things, and make sure that you're really connecting with people who are at these events, mentioning your Twitter handle, getting theirs. If they don't tweet you, you go home from that networking event, and you tweet them, and I guarantee you, that sort of connection that they met you face-to-face, and they have that Twitter connection will increase the likelihood they'll follow you, building your network of people who really know who you are rather than just random followers who aren't going to be as engaged or as bought into your brand and your personality.Next, cross-promote your tweets in a really meaningful way, doing things like embedding a click to tweet on your blog post, embedding your Twitter handle on places that people can find it, doing these things, kind of leaving little bread crumbs around the internet where you can think of. Just again, make it easy, easy, no barrier to entry for your followers to go ahead and find your Twitter handle. Last, company swag. We are giving out MeetEdgar swag in this webinar. Think of creative ways you can surprise and delight your community, and give them all of that awesome ... Who doesn't love a free T-shirt kind of branding that's out there?You can put your Twitter handle on it if it's a cute one. @MeetEdgar is a pretty fun one. We do love our little octopus with his personality, so think of ways you can get it out there that's out of the tech sphere in order to build up your community, and really make that connection with them. Again, incorporating buttons into your funnel systems, not only your newsletters, your landing pages, your blog posts. Lower barrier to entry. People are moving so quick these days.The easier they can find that on the side panel, the better. Cool.Moving along here, these are just some numbers that are pretty staggering and really show why you need to make sure that you are consistently automating, consistently engaging, and really keeping up with your Twitter community. Five million tweets per day are sent. That is insane, so there's a lot of noise out there.It's not enough just to follow people anymore on Twitter because all of that's just getting lost in the feed. If you really want to build up a Twitter community around your business, you need to give people a reason to follow you back.Every time that you think about how staggering these numbers are, also think that your followers, they're not necessarily logging on every day either. The majority of Twitter followers don't log on every day, however, when they do log on, they're probably just scrolling through their feed for a minute, and perhaps abandoning the site, so if you're giving someone a reason to consistently log on to Twitter to make sure they're seeing your Throwback Thursday post that always make them laugh, or to make sure they're seeing your Tip Tuesday post that they know they're going to gain some valuable insight into the industry and into the business, you're more likely to get these people to log on every day, and utilizing a tool like Edgar with our category-base systems can really allow you to do that in a really consistent and awesome, and not time-consuming way at all. All right.Yes, be real.We've been talking about value added content marketing throughout this webinar series, however, we know you guys are planning promotions as well, so don't forget also what your members know when you're running deals.Don't forget to let your members know, "Hey, this is what we're up to. This is how we're going to help offer you value, the discount to our product." Again, if you're offering that value added content throughout the year, it is more likely your followers are going to be able to say, "Hey, oh wow. That's right.""My business could utilize this", and go ahead and jump onboard with you guys. Here, it's a conversation, so always remembering on Twitter that again, it's that human to human connection that we want to stress so, so much. If you guys haven't checked it out yet, there's a section in Twitter. If you're logged into your account, all you need to do is say, "Analytics.Twitter.com', and this will take you to where you're able to see your Twitter Analytics. When you get there from this little navigation bar screenshot you see at the bottom, if you go to that tweets tab, and then you go ahead and set a date range over there on the right, this will actually go ahead and give you a list of your posts that are doing well.Within Edgar, we always like to say experimenting with different categories, doing stuff like that is a great way to learn what type of content your members do want to see, but also pay attention to the smaller factors like, "Hey, are you asking a question?", and it's going unanswered, but when that question category comes up on your Edgar schedule in the afternoon, you get a lot of responses. "Okay. Awesome. It looks like your community is a lot more engaged in the afternoon." Make sure that you're really bucketing your posts around that time. Not only can you find things out in your Twitter Analytics about what types of posts are doing well and what times they're doing well.Other things you can figure out is like, "What kind of TV your followers like?" You can figure out if the majority of your followers are men or women, what their average income is even. It is insane the amount of demographic information that Twitter Analytics hold, so don't let that go to waste. Log in to your Twitter Analytics. Look around so that again, you're understanding your audience so the content you're providing them is always adding value. Cool.After talking about all those scary numbers, definitely don't want you to be that afraid of Twitter.We want to make sure that all the content you're putting out there, when you do catch your followers online, is going to lead not only to your business goals, but also providing them value. These are some things that I always like to stress, as well as you're getting used to this idea that tweeting might take five tweets a day, 10 tweets a day, and a lot of times, as a small business owner, you might feel a little bit self-conscious about how much content you're sending out on Twitter that seems like maybe too much, but we want to really stress that, "What's the worst thing that's going to happen if someone sees two tweets from you in a day?" A, if you're doing it right, they're getting that much more double value from you, and B, it's probably something they're going to be excited to be able to learn about, and as you're doing promotions especially on social media. There's this statistic that it takes about 16 touchpoints for someone these days.16 touchpoints in order to really buy in and establish a brand connection in order to convert them to a customer or to buy your product, so when you're doing this, you never know when you're going to catch someone in an emotional state when they're ready to buy. You never know when you're going to catch someone in a location where they have their credit card ready to subscribe to your service. That's why playing around with your schedule or doing different timeframes and different types of posts throughout the day is so, so important, and always making sure that when you're doing this, you get that irresistible offer out there, and you're understanding your audience with all your awesome Twitter Analytics research. Getting that irresistible offer out there in front of the people at the right place at the right time, and you're guaranteed to get those brand advocates who are really going to be able to connect with your brand and convert into awesome, loyal customers. Cool.After talking a little bit about these numbers, about scheduling, about analytics and stuff, let's talk a little bit about content. How do you actually make people smile, build a relationship, or ask them to buy something in just 280 characters? I'm going to challenge you not to limit yourself to 280 characters.There are a ton of cool strategies that we can take in order to really make sure that you're connecting in an authentic way with your audience. First of all, video. You can upload video to Twitter.Don't forget about that. You can even upload video into MeetEdgar in order to schedule it to go out. You can do this with YouTube links, as well as direct uploads, so it's an awesome feature that you're able to take advantage of to get this authentic content out there, as well as giving you a little bit more time and space in order to say what you want to say in more than 280 characters.If you're struggling to come up with other ideas on how you can produce video, some of my favorite things that I see companies do and some things that we do here at MeetEdgar are you can take some of the more common customer support pre-sale questions you get, or customer support troubleshooting questions you get, and answer those over a video. Show your community you are listening, and it's not just someone who is at like a call center who's answering these emails.It is you. It is the founder of your business. It's your marketing person, whoever who's going to be really comfortable to get in front of that camera and put a face to your business. Really making sure that you're getting those customer support questions answered is a cool way to again make sure that your audience knows you're listening. Introducing your blog over a video.You guys spend so much time creating all this awesome blog content. Make sure your community knows about it, are not only promoting those URL links on social media, but introduce the key concepts for people who might not have time to read the entire article. Pull out one, two, three tips from there that'll really kind of get to the punch, wet their whistle, and let them know that it is worth reading your blog. Video is an awesome way to do this rather than just getting that text URL out there. Cool. The last thing that I like to suggest here is similar to that customer support feature.If you have a future request that you know is going to be built, let your community know about your roadmap, whether it's a physical product or a software service. If you're letting people know about your product and you're really getting it out there, and you're building some excitement up, they're probably going to talk to their friends about it. They're going to say, "Hey, look what MeetEdgar is going to build sooner. Hey, look what this shoe company is going to release soon." Getting all of that hype out there and your video, if you're coming in with the punch, if you're bringing that energy, is going to show them how excited they should be.Cool. Now that we've talked a little bit about the way that you can get creative and getting out from that 280 character limit, if you are doing a text update and staying within that 280 character limit, there's three steps that I like to really go through here. Step one, when you're crafting your tweet, is to provide a tantalizing tidbit. This can come off of the idea that writing headlines is so, so important for your blog post because you're able to create a lot of curiosity in it. I'm sure your marketing team or you as a solopreneur, sit down and think, "Hey, how is this going to provide the facts, as well as an interesting title that's going to compel people to click on it?", and this is providing a tantalizing tidbit just in a different sort of language, so think about how you can spark some curiosity in your tweet. Think about if it's a question, if it's something funny, anything you can put in there.Add some personality. Again, that person to person connection is going to move people to act on social media more than anything else, and then adding images to your posts. You can do this whether it's a static image, or make sure that you guys are also taking advantage of Twitter cards.If you don't know what Twitter cards are, definitely take a peek at our webinar on OG Image tags and Twitter cards, or email Support@MeetEdgar.com, and we can get you all the information there. It's a couple of lines of code you have to add to your blog in order to enable it, and then this URL right here, cards-dev.twitter.com/validator is going to actually allow you to see what your Twitter cards will look like.This is an awesome example from National Geographic here. They have this really rich content, and thinking about if you just share this link without a Twitter card underneath it, definitely not as compelling as if you enable those Twitter cards. You get this awesome image for people to click through on, so a function similar to how Facebook previews are auto-generated. It's just something you have to do on the backend of your site there. Cool.This slide, the new buzzword is going to be going for meaningful engagement. Meaningful engagement is coming up not only in things like how Facebook's new algorithm is really setup if you listened at all to the Google Keynote speaker recently.Meaningful engagement, whether your technology is the way that they're taking your product. Twitter just released that. They're no longer allowing you to send the same tweet to your account more than once, and all of these things, if you look at them in a whole, is every single technology brand seems to be going, "Hey, let's not just use technology for technology's sake.""Let's really add some engagement and put the people back into it", so making sure as you are crafting these 280 character tweets, that anything you can do to be more meaningful in it. Whether it's adding in your personality, whether it's adding in value, that's what's really going to connect with your community authentically and sharable content. We do a lot of talking about creating share-worthy content on social media, and one of the ways that I like to think about what share-worthy content is, is thinking, "If I had a friend who would need help with an article or who need to smile from an inspirational quote, something like that, who would I share this with?"That's a great way to be like, "Hey, this is something that's going to provide value not only to my followers", but if you're writing it in a sense that you're writing this for a friend, the language is going to come off so much more authentically and so much more, connecting with your followers as well. All of your followers, give them a reason to hold on for more.This is really just that concept of asking questions, taking time, setting aside 15 minutes a day to go on, respond to your direct messages, and really make sure that you're getting out there and showing your community you are there for them when they need you. Stop posting for posting's sake, going along with the same theme. Over here, you can see tweet impressions is one of the top things that Twitter shows you on your analytics, however, I'm going to challenge you to know that impressions are awesome. You're hitting people, your brand voice is out there, but this number shouldn't rule your strategy at all, making sure you're getting those meaningful connections out there, and you no longer want to just show up in someone's feed. You no longer just want to interrupt their day in order for them to see your brand. What you really want to do is add value to their day.Another reason, another way of saying this is just to be a giver, not a taker. A way that you can really find this out too is to take some risks. Again, there's so much noise out there on social media that if you're the one who's out there taking a risk of sharing your opinion on a trending topic, of sharing something that you might think is a little bit more edgy than your business goes for usually, something like that, learn if your followers respond to it.Remember, your followers don't expect perfection on social media. They're there to connect with their friends and family. They're there to really escape from their day, learn something, so don't be afraid to get in there and act as yourself, and really make that connection.Cool. Curated content is another awesome way in order to engage and create a community who really likes to and knows how to find all of your awesome information online. Curated content, as you can see over here, this is a tweet that Edgar sent out. Not only does it have the benefit that you're able to tag the person who created it, again making that kind of personal connection, not saying, "Hey, this is just for my thousands of followers", rather saying, "Hey, thanks for all of that meaningful information you provided me, @ handle." This is a really cool one from our specific blog because it also shows a strategy. If you're finding it hard to get all your information and language within the one tweet, don't be afraid to add in that screenshot.This gives you much more room in order to say what you need to say and in order to provide that value right there. Curated content is also awesome. You might think, "Why am I sharing other people's content when I start to take on all of this of creating my own?" One thing worked. What I like to suggest is think about that co-worker who might follow you, and is talking to someone around the Watercooler and saying, "Hey, I don't have to spend that much time going out and looking for X, Y, Z content anymore because I follow this really awesome Twitter account.""MeetEdgar is always curating content, so I know they're providing me with the best stuff out there, and I don't have to wade through the noise and Google these topics." She's telling her co-worker what she does. That co-worker is now compelled to follow you, and they know that they don't have to think about what's going on in the industry news because you're going to provide them the top-quality content every time they log in, so don't be afraid to share other people's content. That is still adding huge value to your followers. Are you building relationships with your audience by sharing content you'll know they'll love?If you so, you should be focusing on that article and video, and not you. This example here from a tea brand shows that I think perfectly. You can see here, it's not necessarily something that they wrote in this blog post. It's written by an entirely different brand called 'Clean Plates'. However, they know their community is really obsessed with household living.They really want to get all of that information out there, so sharing this blog post is adding value. Again, not being afraid to say, "Hey, this is curated content I know will provide you value. I want you to get the best information in this industry." Getting personal in your tweets. I don't know if any of you know Pat Flynn is a podcaster who has grown a really amazing raving fan community out there. One of the things that he likes to say is, "If you're struggling to get personal in your tweets, if you find it easy to just post your links to your URLs, to your blog posts, and other people's content, but really finding it hard to get personal, think about what the nerdiest thing you like is."Are you a comic book nerd? Do you like a certain type of music more than anyone else? Pat Flynn's thing is he loves 'Back To The Future' more than anyone else. Looking at this tweet here is, explains it perfectly. His entire followers know that he loves 'Back To The Future', and those who share that with him are going to just that much more strongly connect with him as a person, really making sure that anywhere, anytime that that name comes up, if they're thinking about 'Back To The Future', his name is going to be in conjunction with that, so get personal.Think about the nerdiest thing you like, and that's what's going to bring people in to love you as a business, to love your brand that much more. Cool. Hashtags. If you guys are using Twitter as well, knowing that you can have hashtags in is great, experimenting with them, seeing what works well. Don't go hashtag crazy though.Again, barrier to entry on social media. People are moving faster in that Twitter feed, so typically, we like to say about two hashtags per tweet is a really great place to start. We also want you to know you can track your hashtags. There are many tools out there that are really awesome resources in order to see which ones people are clicking on. Twitter itself has a trending section to show you not only what hashtags are trending within your industry, but just overall. Since Twitter is such a timely network, make sure that you're getting all of that information, and really getting it out there.Scheduling your tweets within Edgar is an awesome strategy, but making sure you're also taking time to tweet about things that are going on in the real world, and making sure again that you know it's concise and easy to read. Capital letter works within hashtags, anything that's going to be able to have those same concepts of when you're writing a blog post. You leave a lot of white space so that people can read more. You add photos so that it's more engaging. Same thing with hashtags, look at them.Make sure they're easy to read. Don't put 10 words together, but you guys know what to do there. It adds not only playfulness, but it also is ... What a great brand connection, what a great voice showing that we not only thought about his tweet and listen, but to appreciate a connection connecting to him again on a human to human level, going back to that idea of the dinner party. If someone said this to you at a dinner party, you wouldn't just ignore it and walk away, so don't ignore comments like this on Twitter either. Make sure you're going in and engaging with them. Another funny octopus tweet back here, "It's for a buddy. Funny, that's what Edgar tells the counter when he buys a second ice cream cone for himself." Super simple.Doesn't have very much to do with providing any social media value tips to you, but what it's providing again is knowing that we are there, and it's providing that smile on your face that gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling that Edgar's brand does care about you. Last one here, "Suction cuppies, a blessing and a curse."Again, we have this awesome internal document that'll allow you to see language that can be funny to use, like suction cuppies. What a great term. So easy, so simple. Again, staying on brand voice.We are a quirky brand, so keeping that within our Twitter chats as well is an awesome way to get recognized to make sure that people are really following along and knowing who your brand is and why you care about your followers so, so much.Cool. Influencer marketing, going back to this idea of reaching out, getting those retweets, curated content, stuff like that. We'd like to say, "Small is the new big these days", so don't go out and just get followers to get millions of followers. That small, engaged community is really going to be who is going to be your strongest Twitter advocates, and smaller influencers will tell your story, so going out there and reaching out to these larger brands and influencers is a great, great thing to do. However, don't forget about the little guys.They are the ones who care about your story, and they're the ones whose community knows them personally. In order to trust someone, in order to know someone is there for you, you do have to know that they are connected to your story in a real way.Smaller influencers can actually be those who are going to tell your story best, so don't shy away from those accounts who might not have 10,000 followers quite yet. They still probably have that really strong connection with their current followers and will tell your story in an authentic way, because they care about giving the people they know who they're following all of the relevant and best information that's out there. Cool.This is also going back to this idea of creating raving fans. As the market starts to change in any industry, who are those fans who are going to stay loyal to you because they love you as a person? One of the ways that you can start to think abou