Ep 67 Why Donald Trump is the Master of Twitter March 7 16

Is donald trump the master of twitter.

Speaking, the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in life, Speaking with TJ Walker?

That's a pretty easy question. Of course, Donald Trump is the master of Twitter. Now, folks, this isn't an endorsement, but it is indisputable that Trump can tweet something. He has millions of followers. First of all, he was able to get millions of followers. Second of all, he's able to get major TV networks, newspapers, to use those tweets, to use his quotes, and to build entire stories around them. So. And he can control the political narrative. Now, I'm coming to you in a time where it's early in the primary season. Donald Trump is winning at the moment. So those of you watching this in 2017, 18 or beyond, some of this may seem irrelevant. But when it comes to Donald Trump's mastery of Twitter, I want to explain what he's doing. Well, not necessarily what everyone else should do, but why it is particularly effective for him. And this was something people have been talking about. The good folks over@slate, slate.com ran an excellent story this week on it as well. I wanted to share with you some of their insights. It says, what is the secret to Trump's Twitter success? He cemented his reputation as a modern social media master by relying on old age. Then they use kind of a dirty word I won't use here. Let's just say unpleasant person's moves, whether he realizes or not. And he's tweeted that he has a very high iq, so I'm assuming he does. His most Trumpian tweets managed to hit upon all three of Aristotle's mode of persuasion logos, the appeal to logic, ethos, the appeal to credibility and pathos, the appeal to emotion. So here's an example. One of Donald Trump's tweets. A suicide bomber has just killed US Troops in Afghanistan. When will our leaders get tough and smart? We are being led to slaughter. So the analysis of this particular reporter at Slate says a statement of fact, a knock to his rival's credibility, and an emotional outburst. Bump set spike. That's a pretty good analysis of Donald Trump. I have a slightly different one. To me, he is skilled at using basic sound bite elements. Those of you who are regular listeners to this podcast and viewers know that I believe all quotes come from one of 10 speech patterns. And what Trump does consistently is, number one, he attacks. Anytime you attack someone in the media and you're in the media, you're going to get news coverage. Am I saying That's a good thing. No? Am I saying you and your business and your organization should run around attacking people on Twitter? No. I'm saying that if you do attack, you will get coverage. You'll probably get more Twitter followers. You will get retweeted. So Trump always attacks. He usually uses humor because the attacks are just so biting and over the top. There's humor and he uses emotion. He has just absolute withering contempt for the people he tweets about. When you put those three things together, that's 30% of all the sound bite options you have. And he does it in 140 characters. As the author of this Slate story points out, Donald Trump seems to it seems as though he has five times as many words as the other candidates do on his Twitter. Well, no, he has the same number. He just packs a lot more in because basically everything has multiple sound bite elements. He's not simply tweeting straightforward, factual information. You can get that his campaign press release page. He's using it to really put a spotlight on something. Now, another one that he just came up with today. And again, I realize we're doing these in an evergreen fashion. I'm hoping what I'm saying is as relevant two years from now, five years from now. But I happen to be recording this on February 25, 2016. And wouldn't you know it, there are another rash of stories about Donald Trump and his use of Twitter. Earlier today, Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president, was on TV and attacking Donald Trump, criticizing him, saying there was going to be a bombshell about Trump that's going to come out regarding his taxes and his net worth. Well, just moments later, maybe an hour later, Donald Trump is tweeting about this. He says Mitt Romney, who totally blew an election that should have been won and whose tax returns made him look like a fool, is now playing tough guy. So what do you have? Obviously, clear cut attack. Obviously the emotion, utter contempt. And again, whether you like Trump or not, there's something funny about this, talking about how Mitt Romney looks like a fool. It's just so over the top. And Trump, of course, didn't just leave it there. He further tweeted, when Mitt Romney asked me for my endorsement last time around, he was so awkward and goofy that all we all should have known he could not win. Again, withering attack, humor. I mean, calling Mitt Romney goofy as a leading Republican candidate, just the utter contempt, the emotion. This is why Donald Trump gets his tweets. First of all, read. Second of all retweeted, third of all picked up by mainstream news media outlets. I'll talk in a moment of what those lessons are really to you and me and others, because we can't all be Donald Trump. We don't necessarily all want to be Donald Trump.

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Some of you are listening to me or watching me saying, well, TJ it's easy for Donald Trump to be newsworthy. He's already rich and famous and powerful. So of course he can get a lot. Well, you could say exactly the same thing about Jeb Bush. Jeb Bush is rich and famous and until recently at least considered powerful. Yet I don't remember anybody ever talking about Jeb Bush's tweets. Now, the false learning here is to simply write off Donald Trump as saying, well, he's a buffoon. And because he attacks people irresponsibly, that generates media attention. There is no doubt that the easiest way to get attention in the traditional media, the easiest way to get attention in social media, is a fierce, fierce withering attack, a strong punch, a literary, metaphorical punch to the face of one's adversaries that's always going to get the most attention. But Donald Trump does something else, too. He does infuse emotion and he does infuse everything with humor, sometimes with rhetorical questions. As the one was that I read to you earlier. The main thing he does, again is he's not just putting out straightforward information. He's not just saying, to see my comprehensive tax plan, click here. That's the kind of thing a lot of other presidential candidates would do, or candidates of any stripe. And it's just not interesting. It doesn't stand on its own. The thing about Trump's tweets is they stand on their own as an idea. It's not just to see my latest speech, go here. The. The problem a lot of people have with Twitter, and I'm guilty of this sometimes, is they're using it simply as another distribution channel for a speech or a book or a blog post. And you expect people to just take your word for it and click over here to some other page what Donald Trump does well. And folks, believe me, I'm no big fan of Donald Trump. Nothing I'm saying here is an endorsement of his political views. This is not a political show here, folks. But what he does is he uses the medium as it was intended because he is focusing on just one idea at a time so that if you don't go anywhere, if you don't click into his website, if you don't click to his blog, you still know what he's talking about. You can still discern a particular idea. In the case of what I said earlier, he obviously conveys the point that he thinks that Mitt Romney is a moron and an idiot, and therefore Mitt Romney's criticism of Donald Trump is invalid. You might not follow all of his logic or buy it or agree with it, but there is a thread there. It is understandable and it does in fact make sense.

A question for you.

So from time to time I like to ask you questions. This show is primarily about you asking me questions and you can send me your questions below anywhere you're watching or hearing this program. But I have a question from you. Who is it that you actually follow and enjoy and retweet the most on Twitter? And you don't have to pick a politician. If you're like a lot of people, there may be many people you follow. At one point I followed way too many and I had a New Year's resolution that I'm just not going to follow more than 200 people, which I've stuck to. So if I add someone, I have to take somebody off. But who is it that you actually follow the most? Where you see their tweets and you think it's interesting, it's useful, it's helpful, and you read it. You try to read that person's tweets on a regular basis and you find yourself sending it to others or retweeting. I'd like to know who that is, so let me know. You can send your comments infoediatrainingworldwide.com you can. Since we're talking about Twitter, you should probably tweet them to me. And my Twitter handle is jwalker. But you can also post it on the blog@mediatrainingworldwide.com just click on the news section. You'll see this program and all the other programs there in chronological order and you can post your comments or your questions below. There Any place you want.

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So folks, I really want to appreciate those of you who've stayed with me through the end of the show. Today, I want to do a brief recap of the program. As you know, or you may not know, if you are a first time listener, this program started January 1, 2016, and I decided I would try to do the something I've never seen anyone else do in the podcasting world, which is a daily show, seven days a week about public speaking, communication skills, leadership, communication, and it's a test to see is there demand, is there a desire for this? Because when I looked at other people doing podcast on public speaking, what I saw was a lot of people would start off doing a show two, three, four, maybe even five times a week, and after about three weeks they'd go to twice a week and after a month or two they would do it once a month and then they would just quit after three months. And I have to assume it's because they just felt that not enough people were listening, they weren't getting enough feedback. So I wanted to give you a little report card. I am very happy with the response so far. This is now the 60 some episodes in. So a lot of episodes are under our belt. But we're only in the second month of this, so it's still a very young new podcast. Although various experts like Lipson, the syndicator I use, they claim that most podcasts never go past the seventh episode. And then another 50% of podcasters stop after about the 25th episode. So we're way, way, way beyond that. One of the things I am excited about is the audience seems to grow. Not up in a linear fashion every single day, but certainly month over month or week over week. The audience has consistently gone up. So that tells me there is some need out there, there is some desire. If you have any suggestions on how to make the show better, you think the show should be longer, shorter, you want other segments? I'm open to your suggestions. I'd like to hear from you. The only thing I really can't do that I have had requests for is I really can't play sound bites of politicians and CEOs doing things the wrong way. It's too extreme, expensive, time consuming and difficult as far as getting the rights. And if you put anything on YouTube, because this show is distributed on YouTube and you don't have the rights to it, they will ban your channel and it's all gone forever and there's nothing you can do. And believe me, that has happened to me. But beyond that, I would love to hear any suggestions you have on how to improve the show, how to make it more useful. If you tell me that it's too frequent, I guess my only response there is just listen to the ones you want to. If you only want to listen once a week. Then go to the page on itunes quickly look at the topics for the subject matters and just click on the one that's useful. If you have any other suggestions, I would love to hear from you. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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