149: How to Crush it on Twitter: 10 Ways to Build Authority and Thought Leadership

Do you have 10 minutes? Because I'm going to give you 10 reasons why you should be using Twitter. Hey everyone, you know this social media, it's big. It's become a vital source for sharing information that you want to get out to your stakeholders. Twitter is the place where you can follow, retweet like and find those big wins for PR types connecting with reporters and news producers on on stories. Media Relations 101 nowadays is interacting on Twitter. It's time to rethink how you reach your media contacts. The advent of social media forced journalists to rethink how they approach their jobs. The same can be said for how communicators who are trying to reach them as well should rethink their roles. You want to be on the platform, just plain and simple. Perhaps you've been told by your communicator if you own a business or you run a business, or maybe a crisis consultant has told you you should check it out, that you may want to, I don't know, sorta. If you have time, give Twitter a twirl. I know many people who want to try it, but they are overwhelmed by the platform. There's too much happening on there. They fear that if they jump in for a few days, they'll have absolutely nothing to say by day four. And the biggest concern is is what if they create a crisis for their organization by tweeting something wrong or worse, just plain stupid. So I get it if you're reluctant to use it. Here's a way to look at the medium to help you get there. Twitter is a many to many model that gives anyone access to your content to build your audience and reach. And yes, it can be terrifying with the reputational risk involved if you tweet wrong information. But you can't argue with its impact. Twitter is authority and authority matters. For example, a few weeks ago PR News posted a story about the reaction to Cuomo's resignation remarks from PR pros that they found online. At the top of the article was a quote from yours truly, accompanied by a truly horrible screenshot photo of me on Instagram Live. But anyway, they had pulled comments from my Instagram Live where I was watching the resignation live, which I had mentioned in an earlier podcast. I retweeted their post and interestingly enough, a PR professor from a college retweeted my post to her students, presumably saying students at the top of it. And I believe what she was trying to point out to them was my use of Instagram Live in a post that I shared on Twitter and that it got picked up by a news source. So see how it works? Easy peasy. So in this episode, I'm sharing 10 easy tips for solidifying your social standing on Twitter. The alternative title, how not to tank on Twitter. All right, before we get there, the first thing you have to do is figure out your goals and objectives. Okay? One of the biggest mistakes that people make in taking part in social media is jumping in without any sense of what they want to do or who they want to interact with. So figure out who your audience is and what you want to accomplish by interacting with them. And all right, here we go, our top 10 list. Number one. Write tweets like headlines. Twitter readers are scanners, so you need to write to grab someone's attention. How can you do that if you haven't used it? I follow an NVO framework that's noun, verb, object, think, who did what to whom as a core of a good news tweet or good media writing. Tweet. Okay. Noun, verb, objects. Number two. Tweet to be read. Keep simplicity at the front of your mind, but tell a compelling story or a reason that people need to keep reading all 280 of your characters. Number three, limit your tweet to one main point. Don't cram too many ideas into one tweet. Use the thread feature if you have to, to add to your original tweet. If you want to see a thread, you look for the THR emoji. And come to think of it as I'm recording this on Twitter. I'm going to share this episode post and I'm going to use a thread as an example so you can check out this episode on Twitter. And I will include the thread emoji in one of the posts. All right, next, number four, put the strongest words at the beginning of the tweet. That's where you're going to get the most bang for your buck, because that's where people are looking. Number five, Use strong verbs when you're writing. Twitter is all about action, and you get action in the verbs. Number six, don't waste real estate with words you can cut, like article words, like and. And the use an ampersand. Or you can cut words altogether. You can mash them together if they still make sense, but you don't want it to look too confusing or that you don't know how to write. Number seven, use abbreviations only if they are clear and obvious. Again, you don't want to have a confusing tweet, and you don't want to look like you are intentionally or unintentionally misspelling your words. What? How ironic. I made a mistake. Talking about making mistakes. All right, number eight, provide hashtags. Hashtags, you know, the numerical sign, the pound sign. If you use those in tweets, you're going to increase eyeballs because people are searching for terms or searching for keywords. People who are following breaking news stories, they will usually use a hashtag. Like when I was tweeting about Governor Cuomo, I had Cuomo, Governor Cuomo, Cuomo resigns. If you're watching a television show, if you're watching a sporting event, if you want to talk about a category, if you want to talk about the category that you work in, you can always use hashtags to be for you to be a part of the conversation and also to bring people in to your conversation. Number nine, spelling and grammar count. Not every tweet of yours is going to be a blue ribbon tweet. But the worst ones will have misspellings and bad grammar. Make sure you take the time. It's only 280 characters there. I did it again. I made a mistake while I was talking about a mistake. Watch your spelling, watch your grammar. Number 10, cite your sources, don't plagiarize and explain all photos with captions. Think like a journalist. When you are on Twitter, you don't want to spread misunderstanding information. That's your top 10 list. I'm also going to add a few extra tips here as well. Beware of fake news. Okay, so this is another way to build authority. Check profiles of people who you share or retweet. Find out who you are and find out if they really have the goods. Check the person's followers and who follows them for their authority. Who can vouch for these people? And also just as an aside, fleets, which I loved using, they were like these 30 second in one minute video captures. They were like Instagram stories. They're gone now and I really enjoyed them. So fleets are gone now. How to get started on Twitter today. Top three tips. Number one, create a profile. The closer you're to your name the better. Because when people set your name on Twitter, they're going to tag you and you want that tag to be your name so they know it's you. Don't force people to click it so they have to see who you are. Number two, start searching for people. Find like minded people in like industries. Follow journalists. Follow organizations close to your heart. Follow what you like. Follow what you love. You will get a sense of how to speak on Twitter by following the people who you watch speak. Simple as that. And number three, just jump in and give it a try. Start with a like, then follow with a retweet, then maybe throw in a comment, then give it your own 200, and next thing you know, you will be crushing Twitter and solidifying your social standing. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks for listening. We'll see you here next week. Bye for now.