MackCollier.com

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Twitter is Not a Social Network

I was listening to a recent episode of eMarketer’s Behind the Numbers podcast when the host made a claim that I cannot source, but still believe. He claimed that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that he doesn’t think of Twitter as a social network, but rather as an ‘interests’ network. As a place where everyone comes to discuss their interests. Such as TV shows, events like the big Wilder – Fury fight this weekend (Go #BombSquad).

Two points. First, Twitter has always been uniquely situated as the one social site that can best facilitate live ‘in the moment’ conversations around breaking news. Whatever the event is, planned or not, Twitter is where you go to learn what’s happening and what people are saying about what’s happening. No other social site can match Twitter’s ability in this area.

Second, Twitter has always tried to push its users toward using the platform to discuss events and interests rather than as a direct communications or networking tool. Twitter’s users have been smart enough to figure out ways to leverage the platform for their own needs, but Twitter’s leadership has always attempted to re-position the site away from simply being a platform where we go and talk to each other. They have always wanted us to be using Twitter to talk about someone or something else. That’s been how they view many of their monetization opportunities.

I mention all this because it’s important for any company using social media sites to consider two things:

1 – How are users engaging on the site? Why are they there, what are they trying to do?

2 – How would the site like to see its users engage with each other? How does Facebook want users to use the platform?  How does Pinterest? How do these sites want to position themselves as being different from the competition?  What unique experience do they want users to have?

 

Too many companies view social media sites as an homogeneous pot where every platform and user is the same. Nothing could be further from the truth, and one of the biggest reasons why most companies have lackluster results with their social media strategies is by not having platform-specific strategies as well. Social media is not one-size-fits-all at either the user or platform level.

Smart companies know the users are different, but I don’t think enough thought is given to how these platforms want to position themselves as being different and how they want to encourage different user behavior. It’s worth considering and factoring into your social media strategy.

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Twitter Will Soon Give Users the Ability to Control Who Can Reply to Tweets

I’ve been pretty critical of Twitter’s recent attempts to ‘manage the health of the conversations‘ on its platform. Too often, these efforts seem to set in place mechanisms that could automatically enhance or suppress content based on whether or not this content contains certain topics. It could lead to giving an artificial impression that some content is actually more popular than it is, or that other content isn’t gaining in popularity, when in fact it is being shared widely.

But I tend to agree with Twitter’s signaling that it will add more user controls into who can and cannot reply to a user’s tweets. In general, I think its better to let the individual user have more control over how it views and creates content, versus having more content consumption decisions made at the platform level where everyone is subject to the same guidelines.

The new settings will let users specify which group they want to be able to reply to their tweets, and they can select for each tweet.  The four groups include:

Global – Any Twitter user can reply

Group – Any Twitter user you follow or mention in your tweet

Panel – Any Twitter user you mention in your tweet

Statement – No Twitter user can reply

 

Oddly, there’s not a planned setting to allow only Twitter users who follow you reply to your tweets. This seems like a no-brainer as it would be an easy way for Twitter users to gain followers; Want to talk to me? Gotta follow me first.

 

At any rate, since it appears these changes are coming, now is a good time to decide how you or your company might utilize these new settings to better connect with others. Each of these settings give you the ability to improve or restrict engagement, based on who can reply. I also think it gives you a chance to revisit your content strategy, at least for Twitter. Each setting gives you the chance to reach a different audience, and as such, gives you the opportunity to accomplish different things.

Global – Any Twitter user can reply. For most companies or individuals using Twitter, this will continued to be the preferred setting.

Group – Any Twitter user you follow or mention in your tweet can reply to you. This is where it begins to get interesting. For instance, let’s say you or your company sells training via a subscription model. You could follow all your members, and then change the settings so only those members can reply to your tweets. Or if you were a popular Twitch streamer or YouTuber, you could tell your subscribers that you will follow all subscribers back on Twitter, so if they want to be able to reply to your tweets, they need to subscribe to your content.

Panel – Any Twitter user you mention in your tweet can reply to that tweet. I could possibly see a use for this with Twitter chats, where the organizer questions the guest, that way you could follow the organizers tweets during the chat if you only want to hear what the guest has to say, and the larger hashtag for the chat if you want to interact with everyone else.

Statement – No Twitter user can reply to your tweets. I think this setting holds a lot of potential for experimenting with driving engagement OFF Twitter. Think about it, if you say something on Twitter and I want to reply, but can’t, then what are my options? I either forget about it and move on, or I find another way to reply to you, likely through email. When I reply via email, the interaction changes to ONE TO ONE. On Twitter, I can reply then others can chime in and it can quickly become a one to MANY interaction, which for a company can present a LOT of problems, especially in regards to customer complaints. Additionally, it can be much easier to convert a follower into a customer via an email interaction, so I think there’s a lot of potential for companies in regards to the Statement setting.

 

As I said earlier, now would be a good time to revisit your Twitter content strategy with an eye toward these coming changes. Start thinking now about how you could incorporate these changes into how you use Twitter, and to your advantage. Hopefully we will also get a Followers setting so only the people following us can reply to our tweets. That could be the most useful setting of all.

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Social Media is Destroying Our Ability to Create Impactful Content and Meaningful Connections

Go scan your timeline on Twitter or your news feed on Facebook.  Look at the articles being shared, and more importantly, look at the headlines.

After a while, you’ll begin to notice something. The headlines are written in a way to attract people that are already on Twitter and Facebook.  This is important, because the content is created in a way to attract people from social media sites, instead of creating content that appeals to your blog’s current readers and subscribers.

Social media has trained us to chase bigger numbers.  We want to go ‘viral’, we want more social shares, we want that flood of visitors from Twitter that gives our analytics a nice hockey stick.

But there’s a trade-off in this approach, and it’s one that a lot of us haven’t really thought about. If you chase new readers, what impact does that have on your current ones?  Because when you chase new readers, you change the way you create content.  You create content that will be more likely to ‘go viral’ on Twitter and Facebook.  When in reality, you should continue to create content that your CURRENT readers love.

We rail on companies for trying to acquire new customers and ignoring their current, loyal customers.  But it could be said that we do the same thing with our own content.  We chase more shares, more visitors, when we should be delighting the people that are ALREADY reading and enjoying our content.

A few months ago I was listening to Rush Limbaugh, and he said that social media has nothing to do with the success of his radio show.  He said he built it before social media, and even now, he’s not on Twitter at all.  He does repost show updates on Facebook, but that’s all designed to drive people off Facebook and back to his website.  He said if social media went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t affect his show in the least. And he has the most popular radio show in the country.

Seth Godin really doesn’t use social media either. He blogs every day, and every one of his pithy posts gets thousands of social shares. For years he wasn’t even on social media. He now does have a Twitter account for his blog, but all it does is repost his daily blog posts.

Rush and Seth are both great marketers and both highly successful.  And neither really uses social media in any meaningful way.  Certainly, neither is creating content that’s tailored to sharing on social media. Now you can easily say that both of them built their following BEFORE Twitter and Facebook, and therefore don’t need either of them. And you’d be right. But the point is, neither is altering their content to leverage social media.

I think there’s a lesson in that for the rest of us. I was looking back at my early blogging from 2006 and 2007, before I joined Twitter or Facebook. I blogged in a completely different style, it was almost like every day I was writing a letter to friends. As a result, I had a devoted community of readers, many of which commented on every post I wrote, and we had wonderful discussions in the comments section. Then, I would go and read their blogs and leave comments as well.

When social media sites came along, the conversations for many of us moved from our blogs to those social media sites. We lament how commenting fell off a cliff on our blogs, as it was ‘just easier’ on everyone to comment on Facebook and Twitter.

But along the way, we also changed the way we created content, and that change in the way we create content had an even bigger impact on dampening the number of comments on our blogs. We stopped writing in a way to elicit conversations. We trust people that we understand, and we understand people we can connect with. Those connections start by creating content that helps us be vulnerable and accessible to our readers. Ironically, this is the very type of content that the ‘experts’ have told us not to create.  Don’t inject too much ‘personality’ into your posts, you don’t want to offend potential customers or clients. Focus solely on business, don’t blog about your passions, that’s being ‘off-topic’.

The reality is, the only true value you get from your blogging is in the connections that you make. It doesn’t matter if you are a personal blogger or if you blog for business. I can tie about 80% of the business I’ve gotten over the last 10 years of consulting to about 10 people. Those are all people that I made connections with over time, via my blog. Maybe once every 6-12 months do I get someone that I don’t know who comes to my blog from a search engine, and we end up doing business. Almost all of my customers know ME first, then trust me, then decide to do business with me.

What if there were no social media sites? What if you could only create content on your blog, and that was the only way you could connect with potential customers and potential friends?

Would that change the way you created content? Would you go from focusing on increasing social shares, to increasing subscribers and readers?

I bet you would. I know I am.

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Sears Turns its Twitter Account Over to Five Dads for Father’s Day

One of the things companies struggle with how to build engagement with their social media accounts. The cold reality is that most people don’t engage with a company on Twitter until there’s a problem. The majority of current or potential customers aren’t following a given brand’s Twitter account on a given day.

So how do you get people to pay attention to you, when they don’t want to? One way that companies have been testing is allowing a customer or fan to have temporary access to their Twitter account. During Alabama basketball’s NCAA tournament run in March, the Tuscaloosa News turned its Twitter account over to Bama super-fan Hunter Johnson. The move was wildly popular, it drove a lot of attention to the @TideSports account, and gave @HunterLJohnson a lot more attention as well.

Last week leading up to Father’s Day, Sears applied a similar strategy:

Sears picked five dads, and let each one have a different day, and a different topic:

One day the topic was favorite tools, another it was travel ideas, another it was cooking. All topics relating back to fathers and ideas for Father’s Day. This is a great example of focusing on customer-centric content. Instead of promoting Father’s Day sales, Sears brings in real dads all week to discuss their fathers and fatherhood. Naturally, shopping for Father’s Day will come up, but it’s not the focus of the strategy. The focus is to bring together five dads and their communities for a vibrant discussion, that Sears hosts.

Overall, I think this is a great idea and I think you’ll see more brands doing this moving forward. Sears can now improve similar efforts moving forward. Maybe bring in cooks to discuss baking for Thanksgiving, or parents to discuss shopping for children around Christmas.

I do have a couple of suggestions for Sears. If I were helping Sears with this effort, I would have stressed the need to leverage the new exposure Sears had to the communities of these five dads that took over the Sears Twitter account. The reality is, a lot of people will check out the Sears account while the dad they are following is running the account, but after that most of them will leave when the dad does. A good way to capitalize would have been for Sears to promote a special discount code for #AskDad participants, maybe give them the code ASKDAD to get a 20% discount.  This would also be a great way to track a lift in sales directly back to the #AskDad Twitter chats.  I would have also encouraged Sears to promote either its newsletter, or maybe a ‘Gift Buying Guide for Dads’, or something similar.

But overall, I thought turning #AskDad over to real dads for a week was a great idea by Sears, and will be interested in seeing how the brand builds on this idea!

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It’s Time For Your Company to Move on From Facebook and Twitter

This has been a frustratingly difficult post for me to write on multiple levels. For years, I have advised my clients to ‘plant in the gardens that they own’ when it comes to social media. Focus on your blog and newsletter, or the delivery channels that you control versus putting all your eggs in a social media basket. If you’re thinking of your digital strategy as a house, your website and blog should be the foundation, not social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

But now I am advising clients and companies like yours to put even less emphasis on Facebook and Twitter. The reason why is simple; Because if both companies continue on their current paths, neither will be around in five years.

Let’s Start With Facebook 

Facebook has been in the news recently over complaints about how freely user data is shared on the site. Recently, reports came out about how a firm, Cambridge Analytica, had collected Facebook user data from users who had participated in a third party app/quiz, and that user data was then reported made available to the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. This actually isn’t a new practice, the Obama campaign also mined Facebook user data collected from third party apps during the 2012 election. Both instances have raised some very valid points about how Facebook needs to be more transparent with how it uses our data, and also about how Facebook users need to be more responsible with what apps they give access to their accounts. Mark Zuckerberg will be testifying before Congress this week and will no doubt be asked early and often about the site’s plans to better protect and care for user data moving forward.

Companies have also struggled for years to make sense of Facebook’s constantly changing algorithms when it comes to determining organic reach for its content. Increasingly, content for brands has seen its organic reach decrease as Facebook has encouraged companies to move to a paid strategy to maintain or increase reach with its audiences. These moves have especially hit small businesses hard, many of who have basically leveraged a brand page on Facebook as their de facto website. Additionally, it creates frustration for social media managers everywhere because just as they seem to adjust to Facebook’s latest ‘algorithm’ change, a new one is sprung on them that throws their engagement efforts into a new tailspin. The end result for companies from every change by Facebook seems to have one commonality: Less organic reach for your content.

And Then There’s Twitter 

I joined Twitter in March of 2007, and ever since then, I have had a love/hate relationship with the site. I love the site and how it gives me the ability to so easily connect and talk directly with so many interesting people. But I hate how Twitter’s founders (Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and Ev Williams) have always wanted the site to be a broadcast platform and not a social one. Replies were never intended to be a part of Twitter. Think about that…Twitter was founded without any thought given to incorporating the functionality for users to talk to each other. The feature was later adopted due to pressure from the Twitter community, and as you can tell from Ev’s update in 2008 on how Replies work on Twitter, he’s obviously not a fan of them.

In fact, one of the earliest changes Twitter made to replies signaled how the founders didn’t value users being able to connect with each other organically. Up until around 2008 or so, you saw every reply that anyone you followed made. For instance, if I’m following Jake, and Jake replied to Mary, I saw Jake’s reply. Why was this a big deal? Let’s say I’m not following Mary, I have no idea who she is. But she’s a friend of Jake’s, and she happens to have the same taste in movies that I do. Before Twitter changed how replies work, when Jake and Mary started discussing the movie Memento, I could see Jake’s replies to Mary, and then I would know that Mary loves the movie Memento as much I do! Suddenly, I’ve found a new friend to follow who shares my taste in movies, thanks to seeing her conversation with Jake. But Twitter decided early on that if Jake (who I follow) was talking to Mary (who I don’t follow), then I can’t see their conversation. Which means I may never meet Mary or have any idea who she is or that she loves Memento as much as I do. This move to limit how you see replies seems inconsequential now especially to anyone that joined Twitter after 2008 and has no idea what I am talking about, but trust me, this was a wonderful way to organically meet new and interesting people. And the fact that Twitter didn’t see or appreciate this, was very telling.

And then there’s this recent tweet from Jack Dorsey:

This is Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sharing a tweet from fellow Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, about a radical political article that appeared on Medium. The article on Medium, in short, calls for an end to attempts at bipartisan agreements in politics, and the elimination of one major political party so that the other party can ‘rule’ the country. Putting aside how scary it is for the CEO of a major social media site to so openly promote such incendiary political commentary, such ideas fly in the face of everything that is supposed to make social media so incredible. The great promise of social media was always this: Everyone gets a voice. For the first time in recorded history, the majority of the planet now had the ability to create content and reach the majority of the planet. We can talk to each other, we can learn from each other. And perhaps most importantly, we can talk to people with different viewpoints than our own.

Jack’s enthusiastic sharing of this article suggests to me that we have a very different view of what makes social media so great. And yes, I’ve been doing a slow burn about this tweet for a few days now.

I started blogging in 2005. Back in those days, many of us used a tool called Technorati to check our incoming links. I did as well, and since I was at the time writing for an advertising blog, the links I got were typically from other advertising blogs.

Then one day I saw an incoming link from a blog I’d never heard of. It contained what appeared to be Japanese or Chinese symbols.  I clicked on the link, and discovered it was the personal blog of a 13 year-old girl in China. Suddenly, it hit me what had just happened. I had written a post in Alabama, that I teenager in China had read and enjoyed so much that she had linked to it on her personal blog. A year prior, it would have been all but impossible for me to reach anyone in China, much less a teenager. Now, thanks to social media, I had tool called a ‘blog’ and I could reach her, and she could reach me.

The power of social media has always been about more connections and more conversations, not fewer. Facebook and Twitter are arguably the two most powerful social media sites in the world, but I fear that the founders of both sites have lost sight of what makes social media so incredible.

What Does the Future Hold For Facebook and Twitter. And Should Your Company Be a Part of It?

There is growing distrust among Facebook and Twitter’s users toward both sites. Both sites need to be more open and willing to listen to their users. This has always been a problem for both sites, I remember having conversations as early on as 2009 with other Twitter power users about how the site needed a Community Manager, someone that could be a liaison between the users and the company. Too often, it seemed like users of both sites would advocate for changes, then without warning, the sites would announce changes that seemed to be completely disconnected from the changes that users actually wanted.

In short, if both Facebook and Twitter continue on their current paths, neither site will be around in 5 years, at least not in any form resembling how it looks today. In social media as it is in life, nothing lasts forever. Just ask MySpace.

Having said all this, there is still potential value for your company on both Facebook and Twitter. If you’re already active on either or both sites and seeing results that meet your goals, then stick with it for now. But moving forward, make sure that you depend more on the channels you control, such as your blog, and less on the ones that you don’t, such as social media sites. In fact, if you want to try something new with your digital strategy, launch a newsletter before you get on Instagram or Snapchat. In other words, be more dependent on channels you own, and less dependent on the ones you don’t.

Long-term, you should ask yourself “If Facebook and Twitter went away tomorrow, how would we reach our customers?” Increasingly, your customers are either considering a move away from these sites, or they are actually leaving.  In the last fiscal quarter of 2017, Facebook actually reported a marginal decrease in US users. Twitter also struggled to hold onto users in 2017.

My advice to clients remains the same as it has always been: When it comes to digital content creation, plant in the gardens that you own.

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Sorry Twitter, I’m Leaving You For LinkedIn

I joined Twitter in March of 2007. It took about six months, but I eventually fell in love with the social media site. I joined Facebook and tinkered there too around this time, but Twitter won my heart. It gave us a way to instantly connect and have real-time conversations with, well….anyone that was on Twitter! The ability to discover new people and hear differing points of view on any topic imaginable was intoxicating

So for years, I spent almost all of my time on Twitter, and a bit of time on Facebook. LinkedIn was sort of the outcast. I never really saw the point as all it seemed to be was the same people I followed on Twitter, sharing the same content. Maybe a bit more focused on business, but it was pretty much a content stream, whereas Twitter was where you got the content AND the conversations around that content!  An easy win!

But over time, Twitter got popular. REALLY popular. The celebrities found Twitter around 2010 when Oprah and A+K joined. Those celebrities brought more celebrities, and that also brought the mainstream media to follow them. The user experience on Twitter changed dramatically. The era of conversations had ended, the era of broadcasting had begun. One of the most popular posts I’ve ever written here was this one in 2015 lamenting that the organic conversations have left Twitter. It’s only gotten worse since then. Since 2016, Twitter has become a tinderbox of political arguments and fights. Every day the Twitter trending topics are dominated by political articles that are attacking this side or that side. And I still want to know what the New York Times’ secret for getting a minimum of one article to trend every single day, because they’ve found something no other media source can duplicate. (Sidenote: As I am finishing this post, the term “The Benefits of Boat Rentals” is trending on Twitter, with TEN tweets in the last hour. AFTER it started trending).

The constant fighting over politics really drained me. It’s basically driven me off Facebook, I log in once, maybe twice a week now, where I used to check Facebook multiple times every day. And it’s seriously killed my interest in Twitter as well.

So a few weeks ago, out of sheer desperation, I decided to give LinkedIn another look. What I found was a site that actually understands who its audience is: Business professionals.  There was almost no talk of politics, the focus is on business. And I noticed something amazing about the newly-designed home feed: LinkedIn shows me what activity MY network is engaging in.  It shows me when Tom endorses someone, or when Kelly Likes an article, or when Jim connects with Jessica. LinkedIn makes it easy to DISCOVER new people and new information!

This is the thing that made Twitter SO amazing as a discovery tool in its early years!  For those of you that joined Twitter after say 2009 or so, you don’t know that Twitter used to let you see when people you follow interact with someone that you are NOT following.  So if Kerry is chatting with Chris (who I am not following), I could still see her tweets to Chris. It was a wonderful way to meet new people like Chris, because I could see what Kerry (who I follow) was saying to Chris (who I wasn’t following). But Twitter decided that such a feature was DISTRACTING from the core user experience. In fact, Twitter has said all along that Twitter was never intended to be a platform for conversations, it was designed to be a broadcasting tool.

LinkedIn is changing into the discovery tool that Twitter used to be. That, plus almost all of the political nonsense is checked at the door. The focus is business, and connecting with and discovering new business contacts and information. LinkedIn even curates a Daily Rundown, which gives you a quick overview of the BUSINESS stories you need to know. Oh, and they now have over half a billion users worldwide.

It’s funny because when I started using and enjoying Twitter, I wanted it to get the attention I thought it deserved. I wanted companies to spend more time there, I remember being upset because it never got mentioned in the mainstream media. “Be careful what you wish for.”

LinkedIn is currently my favorite social media site, and the one that I find the most useful. Which social site do you enjoy the most?

UPDATE: It’s been very interesting to see the reaction this post has gotten on social media. I only shared it on LinkedIn and Twitter, and only once on LI.  As you can see from the share counts, it’s far more popular on LI, but I guess that’s somewhat expected since it seems to be more favorable toward LI than Twitter. What’s fascinating to me is the vitriol I’ve seen on Twitter over this post. People have insulted me, told me I don’t know how to use Twitter, accused me of clickbait, etc. The clickbait charge I can somewhat understand but the title was more an analogy to dating, like Twitter isn’t my ‘steady’ anymore, now I’m seeing LI.  And what I’ve really noticed on Twitter is most people are commenting on the title without actually reading the post. This happens far too often on Twitter. On the other hand, the reaction on LI has been far more measured and has actually sparked several deep and interesting conversations. The reaction on Twitter has mostly been that I am wrong and not using Twitter the ‘right’ way, and that I don’t know how to drive engagement. If anything, the reactions have helped solidify my decision to spend more time on LI versus Twitter moving forward.

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Social Media Doesn’t Have a ‘Fake News’ Problem, it Has a Transparency Problem

Social Media, Fake NewsEarlier this year, a troubling report came out where former Facebook contractors claimed that they were given orders to manipulate the trending topics and articles that Facebook presents to its users. More specifically, these contractors claimed that Facebook wanted them to not only remove some political articles from conservative sources, but additionally they were told to inject some articles into the trending section even though these articles hadn’t generated enough interest to trend organically.

The idea that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter might be ‘curating’ their Trending Topics instead of letting them trend organically isn’t new. Personally, I’ve noticed that many topics and links seem to trend on Twitter without seemingly having the engagement levels they would need to trend organically.  This seemed to intensify as we neared the election in November, I noticed multiple political articles from The New York Times trending almost daily, while no other news source could get even one political article to trend regularly.  Other topics would be trending with only a dozen or so tweets, which seems impossible.

All of this helps create the suspicion that maybe the ‘trending’ topics we are getting on social media sites are actually being curated for us by not the users, but the people running those sites.  Add to this issue the latest flack over ‘fake news’.  Whenever you see the term ‘fake news’ it typically refers to websites that run stories making claims that either cannot be substantiated, or are ‘sourced’ by websites or organizations that don’t actually exist. Sometimes the claims are outright lies, all are designed to get clicks. Even this phenomenon can have grey areas.  If a supposedly political website makes a bizarre claim about Trump that they source via a fictional newspaper, that’s pretty clearly fake news.  But if CNN takes a Trump quote from a rally out of context to present a point of view that they know Trump didn’t intend, is that fake news?  It can get murky sometimes to know what ‘news’ is news, and what is ‘fake’.

Recently, Facebook announced that it was going to start leaning on outside sources to help it decide what is and is not ‘fake news’. Facebook wants to first make it much easier for its users to flag and report news that it feels is ‘fake’. If an article gets enough flags, it will then be sent to an editorial board for review.  Facebook has recently said that representatives from groups such as Snopes, the Associated Press, Politifact, and ABC News would then review the articles and decide if they should be banned or not from Facebook.

This potentially creates a new problem: “Who checks the fact-checkers?”  Many conservatives would argue that all of the above listed sources tend to lean toward the left in their political biases.  Basically, seeing that the AP, ABC News or Snopes will be helping Facebook decide what is and is not ‘fake news’ raises the same concerns for conservatives that it likely would for liberals if Fox News was doing the vetting.

All of this, whether it is ‘fake news’ or questions over trending topics, has created a bit of a trust problem for social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.  It’s difficult, if not impossible to tell how topics do or do not trend. A lack of understanding leads to a lack of trust, and right now, most of us have no idea how or why Twitter and Facebook decides what topics do or do not trend. Most of us assume that the topics that the most people are talking about will be the topics that trend.  Facebook and Twitter both attempt to tailor trends by taking into account what the people in your network are talking about.  All of this is fine, in theory.

But if major social media sites like Twitter and Facebook want its users to trust the trending topics it shows us, they need to do a better job of being transparent about how they arrived at that list. Now, more than ever, people are more suspicious of ‘the media’ and are more likely to assume that information is being altered to further a particular slant, versus simply reporting the news and letting us decide. At this point I’m more worried about the validity of the ‘trending topics’ process, than I am the validity of the sources of information that are trending.

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PBS Tabs @ScottMonty to Live-Tweet Sherlock: The Abominable Bride Premiere Jan 1st

There’s a constant debate when it comes to driving awareness of a brand, product or event over whether it’s better to work with influencers, or fans.  With influencers you’re getting reach, but fans have more passion for your brand and message.

But the best of both worlds is to work with influencers that are also fans.  This is what PBS has done by again having Scott Monty, a huge Sherlock Holmes aficionado, live tweet the premiere of its new Sherlock event which premieres on Jan 1st.  I love what PBS is doing here and have always said that brands, especially in the entertainment industry, should be doing a better job of connecting with its fans to help promote shows, series and events like PBS is doing here.

If you want to follow along on Twitter, follow the hashtag #SherlockPBS from 9:00-10:30 PM Eastern on January 1st.

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You Will Share This Post, But You Won’t Read It

I check my Twitter notifications way more than I should.  Recently, I checked Twitter and didn’t see any new notifications.  I did some other work and came back just a few minutes later and was shocked at what I saw.

25 new notifications on Twitter.  That meant in just a few minutes, literally dozens of new notifications had come in.  I got excited, hoping this meant that someone had shared one of my posts, and then their followers had shared it, and then an avalanche of traffic would fall on my blog.  It would be glorious!

Sure enough, an ‘influencer’ had RTed one of my posts, and almost immediately, their followers started RTing the first RT, and within 10 mins, I had already gotten 25 people either RTing my post, or Liking it.

Excited, I rushed to my Google Analytics dashboard to check my traffic to see how many clicks this flood of RTs was sending to my blog and I was stunned at the number.

Zero.

Over 20 RTs within a 10 minute period had sent a grand total of zero people to my blog.  Something is definitely wrong.  We were all sold on the idea that sharing is caring.  That we want to see our content shared, because when its shared, that translates into more traffic.  And when you read a blog and see a post with a high share count, that means more people are reading it.

But is this really the case?

Research into the impact social sharing has on blog traffic has come up with a startling conclusion: There’s little to no relationship between social shares and a change in blog traffic:

A widespread assumption is that the more content is liked or shared, the more engaging it must be, the more willing people are to devote their attention to it. However, the data doesn’t back that up. We looked at 10,000 socially-shared articles and found that there is no relationship whatsoever between the amount a piece of content is shared and the amount of attention an average reader will give that content.

So if we accept that the relationship between social sharing and traffic is weak at best, what true value do those social sharing numbers really have?  Are they a true signal to readers that a piece of content is more popular (and thus more worthy of your attention), or is this another case of social media numbers being worthless?  Further, if we believe that social sharing numbers aren’t credible, what external factors can we use to judge if others find a piece of content valuable?  Comments seem like a likely starting point, but with more and more blogs turning off comments, that is increasingly being taken off the board.

What if you had no external signals to tell you if a piece of content was viewed by a larger community as being valuable? How would you know, would you have to (gasp!) actually read it?  Perish the thought!

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10 Steps to Creating a Successful Twitter Chat

Creating a successful Twitter chat #Blogchat was first started in March of 2009 and since that time has been one of the most popular chats on Twitter.  It’s definitely been a labor of love for me, and I am a HUGE proponent of Twitter chats.  So I wanted to write down the ten steps I’ve taken to build #blogchat up into the success it has become.  I would hope you can use this advice to start your OWN successful Twitter chat.

The focus and structure of the chat

1 – Pick the theme of the chat.  This sounds like a no-brainer, but you need to be careful here.  I picked #blogchat on purpose because I wanted to be able to cover all forms of blogging.  These leads to a wider audience, and allows me to tweak the weekly topics to appeal to a wide or smaller group.  For example, if I had gone with #corporateblogchat, then the theme of the chat is much smaller.

I think a broader theme leads to a larger audience, while a more niche theme will lead to a smaller following.  Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just depends on what you want to discuss.

2 – Pick the time.  Think about who you are trying to reach.  If the majority of the people you want to reach will be working a 9-5 job, then you probably need to pick lunchtime or the evening for your chat.  In general, I think lunchtime and early to mid-evenings are the best times for Twitter chats.

3 – Pick the schedule.  Most Twitter chats are weekly, but that doesn’t mean yours has to be.  If you are going with a niche focus, you might want to start out with a bi-weekly or monthly chat, then increase the frequency as demand warrants.  But make sure that you at least lock-down the day of the week that your chat will be, and stick to it.  Others can’t promote the chat to their contacts, until they know for sure when it is.  And no matter what day and time you pick, someone will say it isn’t the best for them.  I am constantly having people tell me they want to join #blogchat, but can’t because it’s on Sunday nites.  But sometimes when a holiday or special event falls on Sunday nite, I will move #blogchat to Monday for that week.  And as soon as I do, some people will tell me that they can’t join because Monday nites are no good for them.  So pick the day that works best for YOU, and stick with it.

4 – Decide on the flow.  Will you tightly moderate the chat, or will it be very loose in structure.  My thinking with how I moderate #blogchat has always been ‘get out of the way of the smart people’.  So I basically throw a topic idea out for each #blogchat, and let the smart #blogchat participants do their thing.

Now if that’s your cup of tea, fine.  But many chats go with a very structured format, with a chosen topic, then multiple questions asked around that topic.  A new question is asked every 15 or so minutes.  Some people really like this format.  In the end, it really comes down to which YOU like, but definitely pay attention to what the chat participants are telling you.

Building a following for your Twitter chat

5 – Ask your chat’s participants for their feedback, then act on it.  One of the things I often do is ask #blogchat participants to help me pick that week’s topic (seriously after a few weeks, you are probably going to be scrambling to find new topics to cover).  If I decide to go with a suggestion from one of the participants, I point out to everyone who suggested the topic, and thank them.

Another example is OPEN MIC.  Several months ago, I wasn’t able to join #blogchat one Sunday nite.  So instead of canceling it that week, I decided to make it OPEN MIC for that week, meaning everyone could talk about whatever blogging topic they wanted.  I was afraid the idea would be a disaster, but instead it was so popular with #blogchat participants that I decided to make it a monthly event.  So now, the last Sunday nite of every month is OPEN MIC.

6 – Bring in co-hosts.  As part of the listening to #blogchat participants, I could tell that many of them wanted to discuss how to improve the SEO of their blog.  I am NOT at all qualified to discuss this, so I asked Lee Odden if he would join us, and he graciously accepted.  Over the last 16 months, I’ve brought in several co-hosts to help me cover topics.  This makes the quality of #blogchat better PLUS, it provides additional exposure for #blogchat, since the co-hosts have a natural incentive to promote their involvement in #blogchat to their networks.  So it’s a win-win.  And the good news is, as your Twitter chat grows, it only becomes easier to attract co-hosts.

7 – Invite and welcome newbies.  As #blogchat has grown, it has attracted a lot of new people that want to see what the big deal is.  But the problem is, if you aren’t familiar with #blogchat, it can be completely overwhelming the first time you join.  So whenever I see someone tweet that they are joining #blogchat for the first time, I reply welcoming them, and invite them to join in, and also encourage them to let me know if they have any questions.  That’s a great way to ensure that they stick around and give #blogchat a chance, plus it lets them know that I really do appreciate them joining us.

8 – Shift ownership.  If you think you can build a successful Twitter chat by yourself, you are insane.  It’s going to take a lot of hard work and dedication, and it is going to take acknowledging and empowering the people that are helping to grow your chat.  If someone does a recap of one of your chats, RT that.  If others are helping promote when the chat is and what it’s about, send them a quick @ or DM thanking them.  Let your chat participants know that THEY are very much a part of the success that your chat is having.  That will simply give them the incentive to promote and grow the chat even more.

9 – ‘No experts allowed’.  I make sure everyone that joins #blogchat understands that NO ONE there is an expert, and that we are all there to learn from each other.  I think this puts participants at ease, and makes them more likely to participate.  I want this, because the more people that participate in #blogchat, the better the quality of the chat.

10 – Say ‘Thank You!’, and mean it.  If you’ve participated in just one #blogchat, you know that I appreciate the hell out of everyone that takes the time to join #blogchat.  I love the community we have at #blogchat, and am so grateful for their contributions that have made #blogchat the success it is.  And I think most of the people that join #blogchat realize that they are appreciated, which makes them that much more likely to help grow the chat, and promote it to others.

So these are the steps that I’ve used to grow #blogchat into the success it has become.  Hopefully, it can help you launch and build your own successful Twitter chat.  I really think Twitter chats hold a ton of potential for bringing together people and growing ideas.