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Threads social – early thoughts

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It launched. The “new” rival to Twitter. And there have been many attempts to become serious players in the social media space. Read the list of Launch > Defunction > Acquisition > Milestone.

Meta will be closely watching our early behaviour on the platform. What we do now may well influence the features, algorithm and future they build for Threads.

This is a rare opportunity to scale a new social media site backed by someone with the money and experience to do it differently (and frankly, Zuck needs some good publicity). Meta will start by doing everything to prove they are not Twitter, not Musk and will be using all their experience and expertise to make Threads a success. They probably won’t be able to resist monetising Threads in due course, but right now this is terraforming in real time. It’s exciting to watch and fun to participate.

How will ThreadsApp play out? My thoughts based on having being a social media user since August 2007 including 7 themes to watch are below. But first… what was ea

My Twitter bio

Halcyon days of the past

What was it like being on social media in 2007 – 2012?

At the time I was in London, part of a group which met in a cafe every Friday and shared, learned together and hacked our way through what had changed on blogs and social in the past week. We all learned a ton and it was a free-flowing exchange of ideas IRL which bonded us. We discouraged advertising and direct selling. We worked together based on what people said, did and knew.

Hats off to Lloyd Davies who founded the Tuttle Club group and thank you for introducing me to amazing bloggers (because those were our roots) like Euan , Kevin Whatley, Jemima Gibbons, SoloBass Steve Lawson, Toby Moores, Adriana Lukas, Mike Sizemore. You know who you are.

The free-for-all nature of discovering and learning was a heady drug. It was untainted by marketers and salesfolk. We read and liked and followed what interested us.

Yes the feed was a “firehose” which was unfiltered. But the scale was mostly manageable.

It was peppered with cute and meaningless features like “Pokes” and Throwing Sheep…. really.

Social media now

Today this world is transformed into a money making machine. From both sides – advertisers and brands chucking out messages, links, offers and “exclusive” discounts while users are far more tribal, abusive and clustered into pockets of mutual interest around news, sport and politics.

From a brand point of view it’s not all bad.

But we have had to get used to the slow inevitability of what Cory Doctorow calls the “enshittification” of each and every social media platform.

When a company is neither disciplined by competition nor by regulation, enshittification inevitably ensues.

They move from fun playground, to competitive boxing ring, to the gradual withdrawal of beneficial privileges into a paid-only format. Each step makes the experience less fun, less participative (unless you pay) and makes us ever more skilful at muting, filtering and speed reading. The pleasure and

The promise of Threads

What should you do now?

Dive over there now and join ThreadsApp (it’s in the App and Play Stores). When you get there, read and watch and learn and understand what a “pure” social media network is like before the negative influences start to dominate.

It’s fun. It’s a new frontier of simplicity.

Yes much of the first 24 hours of posts were themed around “what’s happening here?” and “what do I do now?”. But this will improve and develop.

What I’ve noticed so far.

  1. Most of us are only following people we already know on Instagram. But it does give a home-grown advantage to users who have a large following. This will change.
  2. Much of the featureset is familiar including quotes, retweets, carousels and comments. There is NO edit button. Interestingly, there’s no way to do a “thread” on threads…. you just have to comment on your original post. This will change.
  3. Many people are ‘muting’ accounts which don’t align with what they want to read/follow/learn. The self-preservation filtering process has already begun, and will continue. This won’t change.
  4. Folks using it in the same way they already use other social platforms for marketing / sales purposes are like tumbleweed. Nobody engages with a obviously sales-y link. This won’t change.
  5. Links off the site which are combined with an engaging message, question or observation get comments and replies. This won’t change.
  6. You can’t delete the Threads App without also deleting Instagram. So Meta’s leopard isn’t changing its spots. This won’t change.
  7. Currently there’s no filtering possible. Frustrating for me as I like to create the environment I want to hang out in. Th
Threads app, threads post, marketing on threads app,

Tumbleweed

My warning to marketers

As an industry we have a TERRIBLE track record of spotting a great opportunity and then (frankly speaking) shi*tting iin our own nest as we kill off the lovely thing we found with promotions, adverts and offers. This spoils it for us all.

Don’t do it.

Build your brand with meaningful, on-brand conversational posts and messages.

Yes if you have to link off the social platform to your site, do it. BUT remember the social platforms all understand how to manipulate, human psychology and behavioural economics. They will work to keep visitors on their platform and prevent them from leaving. Any way they can.

I’ve already spotted this when clicking a link to an article on a newspaper from Threads… I read it, clicked another link within that article, read another page, clicked the back button and instead of going to the first newspaper article, it went right back to Threads. Cute. I had to re-click the original link a second time to get back and finish reading the article. That sort of behaviour by me (a consumer) is unusual, it’s only driven by me REALLY wanting to read… most would give up and shrug their shoulders and go back to scrolling Threads.

You’re probably not fulfilling your marketing goals by trying to drive traffic to your owned assets. Work harder to build engagement around topics that align with your brand mission and. which showcase your unique wonderfulness.

And get over there and have a play around.

We all have the chance to build what the future will look like. As I said at the start of this post, Meta will be closely watching our early behaviour on the platform.

Don’t F*CK IT UP, please. For all our sakes.

 

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Paris 2024 blocked tweet

When the Olympics can’t use good English

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I love the Olympics – it’s been my “thing” since Sydney and I have travelled to watch most of the Games since that time.

And I follow a lot of sport on social media as well – so when I saw Paris 2024 had a Twitter account, I started to follow them too. It’s two years out from the Games now and I love the gradual build up of excitement, plus the news about how the preparations are going.

But Paris 2024 has got really irritating.

Tweeting to your audience

I do know that you should speak to your audience where they are hanging out. And so Twitter is a good choice for Olympic fans like me.

For an international sporting event, held in France, I’m going to guess that English will probably be the second most used language for fans – possibly the first if a lot of folks travel from outside France to watch. And so why, oh why does @Paris2024 not have a native English speaker on their team to do the translations?

In following their tweets they were mostly in French – I speak passable schoolgirl French and so could understand much of what was being said. But then English language tweets started coming out on the account. When one announced a “club” where I could register for advanced ticket information, I was quick to act.

The experience fell flat.

Customer transparency

Naturally I clicked through to register for the Club – but the landing page was beautifully designed (love the font) but lacking in two aspects of English communication

  • The “anticipatory” introduction text above the registration form was poorly written
  • The privacy opt in notices were unclear

Being a bit keen, I rewrote the introduction text and tweeted it back to @Paris2024 to illustrate how it could be improved. They blocked me. FFS that’s just childish and frankly, from a super fan like me, going to really put my back up.

I’ve reproduced the tweets lower down just so you can see whether I did a good job of improving the copy.

Secondly the privacy notices which are probably ore important from a marketing communications point of view were unclear.

I signed up for the “club” and so hope to get information about buying tickets. But what do all these acronyms mean? What if I do not tick either box? Will I get any emails about how to buy tickets? What marketing messages am I missing if I don’t check the box? And who are these partner organisations?

If I’d been copywriting this page I would have written out the names of the organisations in full IOC – International Olympic Committee –  and used similar language in both check box messages so it’s clearer to the user what they get or do not get when selecting each one.  I am guessing the second statement is for the Paralympics. Can you see the inconsistency in messaging?

Paris Olympics, fan communications,

Ambiguous email opt in statement from Olympics Paris 2024

Sport Fan Engagement Strategies

Sports fans are a committed bunch – it takes a lot to put us off your brand. And engagement with fans makes community building in public spaces a great way to sell tickets.

Paris 2024 missed a trick here.

If I was in charge of social media for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games I would do 3 things

  1. Build a fans list on each social media platform and seek to get email engagement with them too.
  2. Segment the list by country, sports of interest and start newsletter messaging for them
  3. Create separate profiles for different languages – Spanish, English, German, French for starters…. It can be confusing to get multi-language updates on one profile.

And they should also get some hashtags going… and when tweeting about Rowing in Great Britain, tag the team (@BritishRowing), write in English as well as French, and choose a photo to illustrate the tweet which actually has a British athlete in it.

Paris 2024, Olympics,

The first tweet announcing the club for receiving email updates 

Paris 2024 Olympics, Poor copywriting,

Others agreed that the English could be improved 

Copywriting, Paris 2024

My improved copy for Paris 2024 landing page 

Paris 2024 blocked tweet

And I got blocked for my troubles. 

British Rowing, Paris 2024, Twitter best practice

I love rowing and this thread about the history ended with a photo which didn’t include any British athletes. Nor did they tag @BritishRowing

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instagram, real estate agent marketing

Real Estate and Instagram

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Do real estate agents get good marketing returns (listings and sales) from Instagram?

Great question – and one worth answering before you decide to go all in on social media marketing.

You first have to find out

  • is your target audience on Instagram?
  • Do they think about real estate while using the platform?
  • Will they interact and follow you?

I’m dubious about Instagram as a way to sell real estate or get listing instructions.

Second stage research

Find out if other real estate agents are just growing a following or are actually getting listings from their social media.

Below are articles about how to get followers…. but before you invest a lot of time and effort into this work, figure out whether people who will hire you to sell their homes are using Instagram as a way to find a real estate agent. Do this by asking the people who DON’T list with you, do this by asking your friends and neighbours, do this by asking other agents in your business and competitors. Form a rounded view from all their information. Remember some will lie to you or exaggerate. Who you pick in your sample will affect the answers – if you only speak to cynics you’ll get answers slanted towards the negative.

And it could be that your type of clients are very different from other agents’ clients – this could be geography or age or ethnicity driven.  So assess your answers carefully.

Get social media followers

Here’s how to get followers on Instagram for yourself by copying successful practitioners

  • Search instagram for NZ real estate agents
  • Follow them and read all their posts
  • Also check out their other social media sites (FB/LI/Snapchat (unlikely)/TikTok/Twitter)
  • Work out which ones are getting likes, comments, follows, shares
  • Work out what TYPE of posts are getting the most likes, comments and shares
  • Adapt and copy what they do for your own account
  • See if you gain followers

Above all, beware of buying followers. Just don’t do it.

But you should consider buying social sharing software e.g. Buffer or Hootsuite because they can save you a lot of time especially with scheduling posts (which isn’t allowed on the native Instagram site).

Learn how to do Instagram right

For these links. Read them. Then subscribe to their newsletter, follow them on social (Neil Patel has a great youtube channel too).

And you should research AdFenix – they specialise in guiding your marketing practice for real estate professionals.
Expensive but probably worthwhile. They are a whole-marketing service not just social media.

 

Now it’s down to persistence and regular hard work. Give yourself 3 months before you decide to quit.

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Digital marketing 2021

The Bigger Picture of Digital Marketing in 2021

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I have a good website and products.  My social media marketing is not resulting in sales.  Do I need a media expert?

Analyse past sales patterns

My view is that whether your social media drives sales or not depends on your industry and your target audience.

For the vast majority of businesses, social media does not result in direct sales. This is because customers are not in “buying mode” when browsing social sites.

And so here’s a quick check which you can do – share it here as well if you want more feedback.

  1. List all the sales you made in the past month(s)
  2. Rank them by value highest $ down to lowest
  3. For the top 20% by value, write down against each one how the customer came to buy from you
  4. Is there a pattern?

So for example in (3) above – you might say they came from your mailing list, they might be a previous customer, word of mouth recommendation, or walked into your shop or know a staff member.

It may pay to do some follow up calls if you can – or to ask every January 2021 customer how they found out about you and see if the pattern develops in the same way.

Know your customers

From this, you will begin to learn more about your existing customer base. What their patterns of behaviour are and how your business gets its sales.

Now, if you think this type of customer ALSO uses social and might be persuaded to buy from you via that channel, this is the time to review your marketing strategy and see if social media could bring you sales.

The Bigger Picture of Digital Marketing in 2021

Three things for you to check first

The vast majority of social “sales” come from paid advertising or retail shop listings on social sites. So you need to review your margins and your advertising budget for 2021 in your marketing strategy before deciding to launch into social media marketing in a big way. Can you afford to both hire a social media marketing expert and buy advertising on social? Or would your money be better spent on the channels you already have which bring in customers from your analysis in the steps 1-4 above.

Content marketing is more than just “social media”. The things you are posting on your social channels could also be put to use in newsletters, website blogs and in-store. So don’t only talk about social media – go broader to review whether content marketing is right for your business.

Consult experts to get yourself quickly up the learning curve. BUT be cautious about hiring people who have worked in big enterprise firms – a client of mine got badly burned using an expert who just spent a lot of money with only $800 return for their multi-month investment in their services. Yes they did take up references – and you should too. Become an expert in how to brief a marketing agency first – this will clarify what they do and set expectations. Below are links to articles which you should read first.

How to write an awesome creative brief

https://creativeagencysecrets.com/tag/how-to-brief-a-freelancer/

What does a modern creative brief look like?

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Is Guest Posting Dead?

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In 2014, Matt Cutts, former head of the Web Spam team at Google, wrote the following:

“Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop.”

Ever since the state of guest blogging has been debated heatedly. Indeed, guest blogs with low-quality content have truly been dead for decades.

On the other hand, high-quality blogging is an effective strategy to create backlinks, and drive traffic to your website. Even Cutts eventually published a correction, and said: “There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.)”

So, the question is, how can we create quality guest blogs every time?

Here, we have outlined three easy and effective strategies to create guest posts that are sure to attract links, and bring in traffic:

The Robin Hood Technique

The Robin Hood technique, as suggested by SEO Gold Coast, is a quick and effective way to write guest posts with good quality content. This technique involves recreating great content from popular blogs and offering them to platforms with a low ranking, and less credibility and traffic.

Keep in mind, however, that this does not mean plagiarizing the content – instead, you must only take inspiration from the blog to recreate ideas for your own post.

The following steps can be undertaken for this technique:

Ahref’s Content Explorer Tool contains one billion pages and can be used to find blogs you can write a guest post for

Ahref’s Content Explorer Tool

Source: ahrefs

  1. Enter a keyword corresponding to your chosen topic to find similar articles
  2. Check the “one article per domain” box to find unique blogs related to your keyword
  3. Sort the results according to Language, Shares, Domain Rating, Organic Traffic, and Number of Words to truly find a customized blog post idea

Note the importance of Domain Rating (DR) that showcases the popularity level of a backlink, based on a scale of 1-100.

While it is tempting to only work with high DR blogs, low DR blogs are also worth investing your time and energy in, as they usually have a niche following and are bound to grow.

What’s more, low DR blogs usually receive fewer pitches and have less strict editorial standards – thereby making it easier to get featured or published.

Finally, you can move on to step 4:

4. Read the content of your chosen blog piece, and recreate it by adding a unique spin to it –  conclude by pitching it to low or high DR blogs through email outreach

Splintering Content

Another effective way of guest posting is by splintering or breaking existing blogs into shorter, but authoritative posts.

The point of splintering content is to dive deep into a topic that you have already researched before, as it is easier to recreate, revise, or rewrite.

After writing detailed individual posts, you can then pitch the pieces to online magazines and platforms that would publish it as guest posts, whilst still re-directing the reader to your original blog post – thereby creating quality backlinks.

The Perspective Technique

A small change in perspective can lead to a completely new, and unique piece of writing.

The trick here is to use a previously written blog post and turn it into multiple guest posts by simply tweaking your overall perspective.

For instance, if your previous blog post was on the “The Future of Link Building” – you can now write on a variety of topics by changing your viewpoint, such as:

  • Future of link building for small business
  • Future of link building for E-commerce
  • Future of link building for startups, and so on

Effective Guest Posting

The techniques outlined here are a good way to get you started. Keep in mind, however, that once you start pitching your guest posts, you may be faced with some problems.

For instance, editors and bloggers may routinely reject your pitch, negotiations may take months, or the link to your article may be taken down suddenly and without prior notice.

To address this concern here is what you can do:

  • Focus on creating good quality content for your blogs
  • Pitch to multiple blogs at the same time
  • Include links to your other guest posts to generate more traffic
  • Keep exploring and writing for new platforms and sites

In short, by following the techniques outlined above, you can defy Matt Cutt’s claim that guest posts are dead. Indeed, guest posts are thriving and can be used to generate traffic and brand awareness for your business in the long run.

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Linkedin, company page, social media tips

10 LinkedIn Company Page Ideas & Suggestions

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  1. Create a Showcase page – with updates just for these sub-sets which allows for segmentation of viewers.
  2. Add Company page link to email signatures – update monthly with the pinned post.
  3. The BEST imagery on the Company page – include your logo watermarked into the image. 1,536px x 768px.
  4. Re-write the company overview text to reflect a niche positioning
  5. Check hashtags to follow.  https://www.linkedin.com/feed/follow/?filterType=channel&focused=true
  6. Refresh your pinned post 2x per month.  And re-share it to other channels.
  7. Share your top 5 articles from the blog one every 2 weeks…. Yes repetition is worth it.  And in 6 months change to new articles.
  8. Get more comments by asking questions.  “Are you watching the Cricket World Cup? What’s the best activation you’ve seen?”; Formula 1 Fails at Monaco – did you spot the bad branding in the Casino Tunnel?; What do you do to promote athletes in their off season?
  9. Use URL Builder tool to track web links from your company page updates https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
  10. Set up Content Suggestions so you can do the 4-1-1 model of sharing 4 pieces of content from others to every couple of your own.

What are your top tips?

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Follower Count , LinkedIn, B2B marketing, social media marketing,

Advance your LinkedIn focus

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Many B2B marketers and brands are using LinkedIn intensively as a channel to market, building awareness and interest in your offering.

LinkedIn is NOT EFFECTIVE a direct marketing channel – it’s for brand marketing.

Today I have a challenge for you. Followers.

Follower Count , LinkedIn, B2B marketing, social media marketing,
Follower Count on LinkedIn.

Who follows you?

Go to your LinkedIn page and log in. Then navigate to your followers page. The link is the same for everyone.

  • Following – these are your connections. [Note: it’s not who YOU are following – a bit confusing]
  • Followers – people who follow your updates. This includes all your connections.

Below each person’s profile and job title is a check box showing if you are following then or not; and the number of people who are following them.

This makes it easy to filter. And one click to follow them back.

Check boxes to show if you’re following people on LinkedIn

What to do about LinkedIn Followers

Three things to do:

  1. Browse the list for people who you’d like to connect with and who are following you
  2. Decide on your criteria for following people – everyone, only those with key attributes, people who could be clients; people with high/low followers themselves etc
  3. Make a diary log to check back regularly for new followers

LinkedIn works best as a business development platform if you have a clear client persona; have a clear content writing strategy [topics, frequency, audience]. Targeting the right audience with good content, regularly.

Unlike Twitter, LinkedIn does not have a ratio of following to followers throttle. And remember, following someone is a great way to get their insights, to become acquainted with their perspectives as a precursor to connecting.

Famous people have lots of followers. If you are trying to break into a marketplace and build a solid profile, my recommendation is this.

Follow people whose follower count is low-to-medium. Their news feed won’t be too cluttered and your content stands a better chance of getting noticed and commented.

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Keyword Search Simplified – 3 Ways You Can Find the Right Keywords to Siphon Traffic From

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Whether in content marketing or a Google AdWords campaign, the role of keywords cannot be underestimated. It’s one of those things some people are quick to ignore, but which could very well spell the end for business.

To that end, you need to be working overtime to find the right keywords for your campaigns. Unfortunately, this isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Most of the top keywords are extremely competitive. On AdWords, those competitive keywords can be very expensive.

As a shrewd business person, you may want to preserve your budget by avoiding these overly costly keywords at least until you have a winning formula. On the flip side, cheap keywords rarely return a profit. That’s why other marketers ignore them in the first place. Paying for them would be akin to throwing your money down the drains.

This leaves you with only one option, to find potential keywords that haven’t become too competitive yet. The following are three ways to unearth these unknown high-performing keywords;

1. Invest in Keyword Search Tools

Keyword search tools are software programs specially designed to help marketers find the right keywords for their campaigns. You’re required to enter the parameters of your search, including your target audience, geographic location, and type of business, and then the tool looks up and returns the most relevant keywords for your business.

It doesn’t end there; some keyword search tools are now built in such a way that you can consistently monitor high performing keywords in your industry. This would allow you to keep your ads and content relevant throughout. Some of the best keyword search tools out there include; Soolve, KWFinder, and WordTracker Scout.

2. Learn From Your Competitors

There are several approaches you can use here. But one of the easiest and most effective methods is manual checking. The first step is to identify the products or services of focus. For instance, you can choose to check one of the products in their video blogs. After picking the product, go to Google and search that product or service (we recommend that you use Chrome for your search).

On the first page of results, click the first item on the list. Once you’re on the desired page, click Cmd + Alt + u to view the page source. Here you’ll find the code for that page. Now, check the whole page for non-branded keywords, focusing on titles and headlines. You’ll learn all the keywords they use to rank so well on search engines.

3. Use Google to Rig the Game

 Finally, you can also use Google to find the right keywords for your digital campaign. Since you probably already know about auto-complete and related searches, we’d advise that you shift attention to three other useful sources for unique, often unknown keywords; Google product taxonomy, Google sets, and Google Trends.

Google Taxonomy is used as part of the mechanisms for Google Shopping for categorization of products. Google Sets can be found via the “Google Sets” category found in Google Spreadsheets. Lastly,  Google Trends is a special website created by Google to help users learn what people are searching at different places in the world.

Get Started Today

While not a complete list, these three sources should help you find unique, yet inexpensive keywords for your marketing campaign.

 

 

 

 

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