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Twitter Should Be Bigger Than Facebook

I can show you why they aren’t in two tweets.  More on that in a minute.

I joined Twitter in March of 2007. I actually started hearing about Twitter from online friends in the Summer of 2006, soon after the site launched. At the time, I was working hard to grow my first blog, and wanted to focus my attention there. But more and more friends told me to get on Twitter.

Then SXSW happened in 2007. Twitter made a very smart decision to have a presence at SXSW, because the startup knew that many of its more influential users or potential users would be there.  TV screens were set up all in the hallways in the convention center showcasing tweets as they happened.  Anyone who has been at SXSW can tell you, the hallways are where the magic happens.

After SXSW in 2007, EVERYONE I knew online was gushing about Twitter. I finally relented on March 31st 2007, and joined Twitter.

If you joined Twitter after say 2010, you honestly do not know what you missed. Twitter from 2007-2009 was amazing. It was the most incredible social site I’ve ever been on. Nonstop organic conversations with the most amazing people, from all around the world! At its peak around 2011 or so, I was spending up to 10 hours a day on Twitter, every day.  DMs essentially replaced my email inbox.  I met new friends, made new contacts, did business deals.  All on Twitter.

I loved Twitter in the early days.  The days before the celebs and the media and the trolls found it.  Everyone did.

But the reality is, Twitter never loved us back. I specifically remember a conversation a group of a dozen or so of us had on Twitter, sometime in 2009. As most conversations were at the time, it was organic, and lasted for at least an hour.  It involved several ‘power users’ of Twitter, who all had 10,000 to 50,000 or so followers.  And this was in 2009, when you didn’t see Twitter users with over 100,000 followers every day, if at all. So we are talking pretty big and influential users.

The focus of our conversation (on Twitter) was how it was time for Twitter to officially hire a Community Manager. We wanted Twitter to make an effort to LISTEN to its users, and incorporate our feedback to improve the experience for all. At the time, Twitter was growing like mad. It wasn’t mainstream yet, but it was on the cusp. You had so many smart, passionate users that were so hungry to see Twitter explode. We had so many amazing ideas for how Twitter could become huge.

And what infuriated us, was that Twitter completely ignored us. I think our pleas reached Twitter, because shortly after, Twitter put out a statement clarifying that Twitter wasn’t a conversational platform, it was intended to be a ‘discovery’ or ‘broadcast’ platform.

Twitter said they never intended for the platform to be a place where people went and talked all day.

We were crushed. How could such a popular company totally misunderstand how its core users use and love their site?

But Twitter always has. Twitter has so many creators who have gone out of their way for over a decade to evangelize the site for years.  Twitter has done little or nothing to highlight these creators.  For instance, at its height, #Blogchat was regularly the Top Trending Topic on all of Twitter during the chat each Sunday night.

Twitter never reached out to me or any popular chat host (that I know of) to even say thanks for bringing people to our platform.

They just never seemed to care. That has always frustrated me.

Now about those two tweets…

Ever since Twitter launched in 2006, users have begged Twitter to add a way to edit tweets. This is by far the most requested feature that Twitter users have ever asked for. And Twitter, as Twitter seems to always do, has always ignored completely that its users have wanted this feature.  I can’t even remember a time when anyone in Twitter leadership has ever even addressed the feature request or why it hasn’t been implemented. It comes across as if Twitter simply doesn’t care that its users want this feature.

So imagine my surprise (and frustration) when I recently saw this tweet:

https://twitter.com/TwitterBlue/status/1458110348880343041

Twitter is finally giving users a way to edit tweets (sort of), but it MAKES YOU PAY FOR THE FEATURE.  It’s only available if you purchase Twitter Blue’s monthly subscription.

To Twitter users who have begged for the ability to edit tweets for years, this comes across as such a slap in the face.  Totally tone deaf, yet somehow completely consistent with Twitter not understanding its core, passionate users.

Now let’s look at the second tweet:

https://twitter.com/Clubhouse/status/1460367376721924102

While Twitter seems to go out of its way to ignore its top creators, and always has, Clubhouse goes out of its way to promote and highlight its top creators.  And for extra irony, they are doing a lot of it on Twitter, as you can see above.

This matters. One of the most pressing problems that startups face is growing a community of passionate users who will help the startup’s service or products grow. Many startups bootstrap their core operations at first. Marketing is one of those areas where the startup typically tries to give it a go themselves due to a lack of funds initially. So community management is vital to the early days of the startup in order to retain and grow the customer base.

Clubhouse understands this.  Clubhouse knows if its creators/room organizers are successful, that the platform will be successful.  So Clubhouse is investing in supporting its creators via its accelerator program, and also by promoting them on the platform and by having constant ‘townhalls’ on Clubhouse to discuss what’s happening with the platform, and to review user feedback.

All of this communicates to Clubhouse users and creators that the platform hears them, and appreciates them.  Clubhouse has done more to listen to and engage its users in the last year, than Twitter has in the last 15.

And that’s a shame. As well as a huge missed opportunity.  If Twitter had started in 2006 with the same commitment to engaging its users and listening to their feedback, then Twitter would easily be the biggest social platform in the world right now.  I have zero doubt in my mind.

 

But even though I hate how the platform keeps its passionate users at arms length, I do love the people I’ve met on Twitter, and the conversations that happen there. Speaking of which, I’ve been asked by Social Champ to join their weekly Twitter chat as a co-host. Our session is tomorrow at 10 am Central, hope to see you there!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: B2C Dominates Social, Clubhouse and Twitter Add Key New Features

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope everyone is ready to have an amazing week. Here’s a few marketing and digital stories that caught my eye over the last few days:

According to eMarketer, all of the Top 10 categories of businesses that generate social media activity are B2C businesses. The top category, Apparel and Accessories, commanded over half the social activity, more than the rest of the Top 10 combined! This isn’t that surprising when you consider that B2C businesses have far more customers that are creating content and engaging with these businesses, than B2Bs do. Still, it’s interesting to see which categories are generating the chatter.

 

Very interesting new features coming to Clubhouse, revolving around letting users and room owners share audio clips of the content created in rooms. This will greatly help discovery and promotion for room creators. Twitch streamers have been doing this for years.  The most popular ones will do a stream, then go through the hours of content they just created, and pull out the ‘highlights’ and then repost them as shorter videos for YouTube. Which they then monetize as well. Most of the bigger Twitch streamers have hired people to edit and produce their shorter ‘highlight’ videos, so I could see room creators on Clubhouse making similar moves.

 

Are we noticing that all social media is beginning to slowly blur together?  Twitter is now offering profiles for businesses. This is also aimed at ‘creators’ who want to offer newsletters and monetize their Twitter usage. This continues a sincere push by social media platforms to lock down popular and high profile users onto just their category.

 

So that’s it for this week, I hope you are enjoying the cooler Fall weather as much as I am! A quick thought: If you deal with an upset customer this week, just remember that 90% of their frustration comes from the fact that they don’t feel ‘heard’. If you communicate to them that you hear them, and have sympathy for their feelings, you are more than halfway home to handling their issue. Just remember that everyone is going through something, and we all want to be heard.

See you next Monday!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Exclusive Content Deals for Twitter and Clubhouse, Top App Downloads in June

Happy Monday! Hope everyone had a great weekend. I caught a bug last Thursday during a grocery shopping trip and have been dealing with a nasty head and chest cold ever since. Feeling a bit better today, at least good enough to get some blogging in! Here’s some marketing stories that caught my eye these last few days:

 

So big content deals for both Twitter and Clubhouse, that could speak to the desired branding for both sites. Back in May, I wrote about the exclusive content deal that Clubhouse struck with the NFL to cover the NFL Draft. It seems that deal may have been a one-off, as the NFL just signed a deal with Twitter to have the league host Spaces on Twitter throughout the season. Twitter already has content deals in place with the NFL so this move makes sense. It’s not all bad news for Clubhouse, who also just announced its own content deal with TED. In both cases, I think these deals make smart branding sense for both Twitter and Clubhouse.  The NFL is clearly a mainstream league and it’s the type of mainstream content you would expect to see on Twitter. Clubhouse, on the other hand, has always seemed to try to position itself as the platform where deeper conversations happen. And a content partnership with TED aligns perfectly with that branding. I think Clubhouse should continue to pursue this branding of it being the platform that attracts thought leaders and cultivates deeper and more meaningful conversations.

 

Tik-Tok continued to dominate the app download charts for June, nabbing the top spot for both the App Store, Google Play, and overall.  I was wondering about Facebook, though. The Social Network seems to always be near the top of the downloads lists, despite there being a new Delete Facebook campaign almost weekly. The cynic in me wonders if the number of FB downloads are somewhat inflated by people deleting Facebook, then later finding they can’t live without it and downloading it again?

 

We’ve talked before about how shifting consumer behavior over the last year would lead to a spike in eCommerce sales for brands. But as we see in this chart from eMarketer, Best Buy is the only US brand in the Top 15 that is forecast to have a decline in ecommerce sales in 2021. That’s pretty troubling, as many retailers are seeing a boom in online sales.

 

So that’s it for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! I’ll be back later this week with more posts, and hopefully with less head cold! Hope you all have a wonderful and productive week!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Clubhouse’s Growth Slows, YouTube Pushing Users Back to TVs, the Power of Fandoms

Happy Monday! I hope you are ready for an amazingly productive week! Here’s some business and marketing stories that have caught my eye since last Monday:

 

So from February to April, Clubhouse saw its number of downloads fall by roughly 90%. To help combat this, Clubhouse is pushing for growth in Brazil and India, two countries where Android devices dominate over their iOS counterparts. With the introduction of Greenroom from Spotify, I think it signals that social audio is already shifting toward more targeted or niche groups, and I believe that will help accelerate Clubhouse’s decline. Clubhouse needed to own the social audio space before competitive offerings came out that offered a more niche appeal, and that hasn’t happened. I still think Clubhouse will be competitive in the social audio space for another 6-12 months at least, but it likely won’t end up being the dominant player in the space that we thought it could become.

 

I always find it fascinating how our content consumption patterns change over time and as we become more adept at using tools. For instance, YouTube now claims that roughly 40% of its viewership happens on TVs. What can we deduce from this?  That likely suggests that more YouTube users are viewing longer-form videos. Maybe it means they are viewing more movies on the platform, or maybe it is a sign that YouTube Gaming is continuing to gain in popularity, as most streams from gamers last several hours.

 

I love this deck on The New Fandom Formula by Zoe. It’s a great primer into the power of fans and online communities. Online communities are going to continue to become a major story in the coming months and years, as several stories are converging around the power of fans and customers connecting online. I’ve already talked about what’s happening in esports, but there’s much more on the way. And I love how Zoe’s deck has locked content, and if you want access to the full deck, you have to purchase it. I can speak from experience, creating a high-quality deck like this takes many hours. Content creators deserve to paid for creating high quality work like this, and I think the money asked helps communicate the value of the content. The free version has a ton of useful information so definitely check it out.

 

 

So that’s what I wanted to talk about this week! Now, let me warn you that there is a huge breaking news story happening on July 1st. It will have massive ramifications for the marketing and branding worlds, and I’m honestly shocked that more of my peers aren’t addressing what’s coming. Check back here on Weds for the rundown on what’s coming and why it’s relevant.

Till then, have a wonderful week, see you on Weds!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Clubhouse Arrives on Android, FB’s Group Accelerator Program, Gen Z Likes Influencers

Happy Monday, y’all! Some big social media tech news this week as we are already in the middle of May. Summer is around the corner!

 

The wait is finally over for Android users, Clubhouse is here. It looks like it’s being rolled out to US users first, with the rest of the world getting it soon. This may actually get me back on Clubhouse. An influx of new users will bring new perspectives and it will be interesting to see how this impacts the quality and type of rooms, as well as the overall experience. Plus, it will be curious to see how this impacts download numbers.  I suspect this won’t have the impact it would have if this had been launched for Android a couple of months ago when Clubhouse was white hot. The buzz has cooled considerably toward Clubhouse, so this could give them another shot in the arm, or be much ado about nothing. We’ll find out soon enough.

 

Following Clubhouse’s lead, Facebook is putting more support behind its accelerator program for groups. From Facebook: “Selected community leaders will spend five months learning from experts, coaches and a customized curriculum so they can organize and strengthen their community to work better together. Participants will then spend three months executing their initiatives. They will collaborate with advocates and leaders in the community space and work with the Facebook team to bring their ideas to life.” Selected admins will receive training and mentorship, funding, and access to new products and features before they go live.

 

I’m a bit surprised that millennials aren’t following more influencers on social media. This study found that 28% of 16-23 year olds follow at least one influencer on social media, and 23% of 24-37 year olds do. The same report found that the main reasons we use social media are: “keeping in touch with family and friends (50%), filling spare time (37%) and reading news stories (36%).”

 

So that’s it for another Monday’s Marketing Minute. Another big content week on tap here, posts every day through Friday.  Hope you have a wonderful week, thanks so much for reading!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Clubhouse Signing Content Deals, Twitter’s Growth, Biz Returning to Pre-Pandemic Levels

Happy Monday! Big content week ahead, new posts every day through Friday, hope you enjoy!  Here’s a few marketing and digital stories that caught my eye:

 

Clubhouse signed an exclusive deal with the NFL to provide content during last week’s NFL draft. I think this opens up some interesting possibilities, as we already have some ‘listen only’ rooms on Clubhouse where the host just plays music all day. What if Clubhouse partnered with Sirius to create a Clubhouse Channel that was just on the platform? We’ve been thinking about how another social platform might acquire Clubhouse, what if a different company that’s already creating audio content decided to acquire Clubhouse to supplement what it already offers?

 

Twitter showed modest user growth in Q1. As I’ve said for months, I want to see what the numbers are for Q2 for both Twitter and Facebook. I’m not expecting huge numbers. As most areas of the country are reopening, I think we will see a flood of people getting outside this Summer and into the Fall. Twitter and Facbook spiked while many of us were cooped up in or homes last year, but that won’t be the case in 2021. It will be interesting to see how willing we are to tweet on the go this year.

 

A majority of B2B brands and marketers now expect a return to pre-pandemic business levels by the end of the year. A wonderful sign that the nation is reopening and it’s great to see the optimism. A big component of this will be a return of live, in-person events. I’ll talk more about this on Friday.

 

That’s all for today, hope you have a great week and see you back here tomorrow for an important post!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: The Clubhouse Hype Train Comes to a Halt

Happy Monday! I hope you are ready for a productive week! Normally with Monday’s Marketing Minute I try to highlight 3-4 key stories, but I wanted to do a deeper dive into just one today:

 

If you’re a Clubhouse user, you’ve probably noticed that activity is down a good bit on the platform. You may also have noticed that some of the people you were following are no longer active there.

This one chart tells us why:

The hype train for Clubhouse has officially jumped the tracks. Does this mean Clubhouse is dead, that social audio’s time is over?

Absolutely not. What this means is that the people that were driving the hype for Clubhouse have mostly moved onto ‘greener’ fields.

This was far more common from 2008-2012 or so, but every time a new social media site suddenly comes out of no where to be on everyone’s radar, the hype for it is driven by the same group of people. Those would be marketers, coaches, and consultants. We saw the same thing with Clubhouse in January and February. It seemed every room was about selling a course or selling services, or ‘why your brand should be on Clubhouse’ type rooms. You know, rooms with 15 people, and 12 of them are consultants and coaches.

Let’s be honest, the last year or so has been brutal financially for most of us. As a consultant, its easily been my worst year and I’m still struggling. It’s like that for many of my peers, so when something like Clubhouse comes along, I can understand why a lot of coaches and consultants get excited and see it as a way to drive new revenue.

As I said, this always happens with ‘shiny new’ social media sites. The marketers/coaches/consultant rush on in a cyber land-grab, try to push their networks to the new site, and try to make some quick sales. It usually doesn’t work, and usually the fast hype for the site dies just as quickly. We saw it here with Clubhouse, before that we saw it with sites like Friendfeed and Identi.ca and Ello.

This is why I always advise companies to take a wait and see approach toward any new social media site that’s benefiting from massive hype. The first thing you do is decide WHO is hyping the site, and WHY?  What you want to see is hype driven by CORE users that have been on the site for a while.

We did have some of that with Clubhouse and still do, but the majority of the hype was driven by the people that had just discovered the site, and wanted to make some quick sales. The only way those people stay and keep hyping the site is if they keep making money off it. Which doesn’t seem to be happening with Clubhouse.

Now, does that mean Clubhouse is dead? I think the most intelligent question to ask is in regards to social audio. In February I wrote about this topic, and back then, I had been active on Clubhouse for a few weeks, and I honestly loved it. My enthusiasm for the site has definitely waned since then.

Yet in my post, notice I didn’t ask if Clubhouse was the future, I talked about the future of social audio. Social audio has a lot of potential for learning, for discovery, for networking. I think adding a social audio layer of functionality to existing social media sites will be interesting to see. For instance, I think LinkedIn in particular could benefit from adding social audio functionality. And I also think a lot of those coaches and consultants could actually do well utilizing social audio moreso on LinkedIn than they did on Clubhouse.

Can Clubhouse survive now that the hype is dying? That remains to be seen. Normally I would say yes, but the potential problem is, Clubhouse just closed new funding last week based on a $4B valuation. If downloads continue to fall and the Android rollout doesn’t see a massive spike in users, that $4B valuation will seem insanely high.  The investors will be pushing even more for a return on their funds, and that could put the future of Clubhouse in a tough place.

Having said that, social audio’s future is very bright. I think once the functionality gets integrated into existing platforms, and we start letting creators see what they can do, then the potential will be realized. It’s tough for anything social media-related to have instant success when you roll it out and immediately try to find ways to use it to make money. Social media always has and always will best function as a tool to create and share content and conversations. It’s tricky to monetize those, it’s best to use the tools to first create value, then the monetization opportunities will flow.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Clubhouse and Facebook’s New Social Audio Apps, IG Hides Likes, Which Countries Use Social Media the Most

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you’re ready for a great and productive week. Here’a few marketing and digital stories that caught my eye…

 

Clubhouse is inching closer to launching an Android version of its social audio app. This news comes as Facebook began beta testing its own social audio app called Hotline. I think social audio makes more sense as an additional functionality added to current platforms versus a standalone app.  I’m really excited to see what this functionality could look like integrated into LinkedIn, for example. I also think Clubhouse’s ability to build and retain loyalty with its top creators will be a huge factor in its long-term viability.

 

I am always in favor of hiding vanity metrics from social media sites. This post perfectly explains why. Years ago, a study was done into what determines popularity. Thousands of teens were selected and they listened to dozens of songs by new artists. These were songs that none of the respondents had heard before. The teens were broken into multiple groups. The first group listened to each song, then at the end they were asked to rate the song, and they were given an option to download the song if they liked it.

Another group was asked to listen to the same songs and rate them, but this group had the ratings and number of downloads shown from the first group. What the researchers found was that the songs that were rated the highest with the most downloads, were more popular.  Then for the third group, the ratings and number of downloads were not only shown, but the songs were also ranked according to both rating and number of downloads. Researchers found that when the ratings and download numbers were added, the most popular songs were downloaded at an even higher clip.

What this shows, in my mind, is that we are lazy. We let other people decide what’s interesting or worth our time, rather than judging a piece of content on its own merits. We scan for number of Likes or comments or RTs and use those numbers to quickly judge the value of content. This is why I am in favor of any move to hide such vanity metrics on social media.

 

Think the United States is the top country in the world for time spent on social media?  You would be wrong, the US doesn’t even crack the Top 10!  People in the Philippines spend just over 4 hours (yikes!) a day on social media. The average American spends about half that time on social media.

 

So that’s it for this week’s Monday Marketing Minute! Are you subscribed to my newsletter Backstage Pass? Every Friday, I give you tips and advice on how you can create happy customers that drive real business growth. I also profile how brands are doing just that. Add your email to the banner below and click Subscribe!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Clubhouse is Big in Japan, Canva and Reddit Keep Growing

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you are ready for another amazing week! Here’s some stories that caught my eye over the last few days:

 

So we all know Clubhouse is growing like gangbusters here in the US, but I was surprised to learn it is also pretty big in Japan. Without checking, I would guess that means Japan is likely the 2nd biggest market for the iPhone as well. The social audio space is going to be fascinating to watch, as now both LinkedIn and Reddit are saying they are also investigating adding social audio functionality to their platforms.

 

There will always be a market for any tool that simplifies the content creation process. There’s no better example of this than Canva. So many people in business and marketing are so bad at graphic design, and so many of us wish we weren’t.  Canva slots in to fill that need perfectly. It’s definitely not Photoshop, but most of us don’t need to be an expert at PS, we just need to be able to easily create basic visuals and infographics, and Canva fills that need for us. I love it and use it all the time, and am not surprised to see that it continues to grow like a weed in the summertime.

 

Reddit is another site that continues to grow quickly. Sure, some of the communities can be pretty toxic, but the site really does offer a unique experience versus the other established social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Lately, when I google an issue, I am finding that a Reddit community is one of the top 2-3 results for that search term. If you want to start learning about Reddit, just google one of your favorite hobbies or shows or artists and add Reddit to the search term. There’s probably already a community set up on Reddit for that topic.

 

So that’s it for this week, I hope yours is wonderful, I’ll have at least one more post up here this week. And check out #ContentCircus tomorrow night, we will be discussing how to share the same content on different platforms. For instance, what’s the best way to share a blog post like this on Facebook?  On Instagram?  Twitter?  We will talk about that tomorrow night on Twitter at #ContentCircus starting at 7pm Central!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Telegram Surging, LinkedIn Joins Social Audio Bandwagon, Micro Influencers Get Engagement

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you had a glorious Easter weekend and are ready for a productive week.  Here’s some marketing and social stories that caught my eye:

 

The focus of this story is how Tik Tok continues to do well, but I think Telegram’s surge is more timely. Notice how high Telegram is on both the Downloads and Active Monthly Users lists. I mean, Telegram now has more Monthly Active Users than Twitter does. Which is ironic, since a decent amount of the new users going to Telegram are coming from Twitter. It’s also an interesting commentary on how social media is mirroring mainstream media when it comes to how people get their news and information. Up until the 1980s or so, most people got their news from the Big Three; NBC, ABC and CBS. Then cable television came along, with more shows and more options for news. And that trend has only intensified in the time since. I think we are seeing the same thing with social media. It used to be that most people when to Facebook and Twitter for breaking news. But since Facebook and Twitter have begun censoring accounts that share some information, people are following those banned users to other sites like Telegram. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.  Do I think Telegram will be here 5 years from now? I’d say probably not, but then again there’s no guarantee that Twitter and Facebook will be either.

 

From the ‘We all saw this coming” department, LinkedIn is planning to incorporate social audio functionality into its platform. I think this may work better for LinkedIn than other platforms, as LinkedIn’s users are more geared toward professionals, which in this case simply means they are more likely to come from a similar background with similar interests. Contrast that to Twitter and Facebook, which is sort of a catch-all for users. I think social audio rooms work better for more tightly defined topics that attracts perhaps fewer people, but people who are more invested in the topic being discussed.

 

Micro influencers or T-Shaped Inflencers drive more engagement. This works because one to one engagement doesn’t scale and neither does your attention. As a person’s following increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to engage with everyone in that group. Having said that, Twitch streamers seem to have cracked the code on how to drive engagement at scale.

 

So that’s all I have for this week! I hope you have a wonderful week, and please subscribe to my Backstage Pass newsletter if you haven’t yet, by clicking the image below.

PS: I have a massive post coming tomorrow. Check back here then!