Everything I learned About Twitter I Learned the Hard Way

Anyone who tells you Twitter is easy

is either lying, famous, or from the future.

There hasn’t been seen so much debate about the future of a social platform since Facebook went public. Update: since Snapchat went public.

Many of you may not recall that after Facebook’s initial public offering (IPO), its stock price traded below – well below – the IPO price for 18 months. (After 8 months Snap continues to trade at 50% of its IPO price).

While millions of investors wondered if they’d ever be whole again, there were many questions about Facebook, its management, its strategy and whether this whole social media thing was just a massive hype job. Ditto with Snap.

It got so bad that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg started showing up at investor meetings wearing a tie. He never wore a tie! He was famous for not wearing a tie! You could almost hear the sigh of relief on Wall Street: “Finally. He gets it.” And then new money came into the stock. And the long, dark period of Facebook was over.

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Twitter’s reputation as the world’s most difficult social channel is well earned. Twitter has done little to prevent users and investors from casting aspersions about its future; it seems as if every time Twitter goes for a layup it bounces off the rim. Perhaps "execution" is a word that sums up Twitter's woes. Unfortunately for Twitter, execution is what social media stocks and companies are all about.

Of course to us loyal Twitter users, none of this really matters. Too much time has been spent conquering Twitter’s complexities to give up on it. If you thought Wikipedia was tough... Like a weight loss program, once you get to a certain point, you say that was really worth it! Millions of people every day think Twitter is amazing. I'm one of them.

Yet some of us wonder why Twitter continues to leave so many users to figure out the service on their own. Every day I see accounts that Tweet once or twice in earnest, unguided, pining for followers.

It wasn't until I saw what was going at Twitter (the company) I realized that Twitter has its hands full.

For a media company that is trying to move aggressively into live video, this scene is a bit of a problem.

For some of us – and I bet it’s a large number – the question of why doesn’t Twitter help you with Twitter seems like an obvious question. Like, if Twitter itself doesn't do a great job Tweeting then who does? Kanye? Or maybe this is a coach-doesn't-have-to-play-well analogy.

So where are Twitter's hidden manuals? They're there. You just have to know how to use Twitter's advanced search to find them. Most users don't get that far.

It seems like Twitter might want to decide if it caters to Kanye West or the average SMB. Or both! So far, Twitter caters a lot more to Kanye than it caters to me.

One example: why hasn’t Twitter excluded handles (that's a reference to your @Twitter address) and links from its 140 character limit? It announced it would do this months ago.

My theory on why Twitter hasn’t focused on its users (I spent several years on Wall Street helping investment banks market large IPOs) is that Twitter already has its hands full with – guess who? Wall Street! This is very common after firms go public. Which is why firms that go public need good people in the second, third, fourth and fifth positions.

Now, if you’re one of those people who have stuck it out with Twitter and have learned it the hard way, let’s congratulate one another, shall we? I dunno how’s #DIDTWIT. Actually that’s stupid. Hashtags are hard, as one dear user from Manitoba points out:

If you are on the road to Twitter loyalty or even Twitter stardom, surely you have asked these same questions: How can I get more Followers? What is Twitter good for if people won’t follow me? Why can't you search for Twitter lists on Twitter? Why does Twitter make it so hard to get followers? Why doesn’t Twitter suggest people who will follow me? Until finally: hey maybe I should try out this other platform...

But inevitably you return to Twitter, to check the news or see what @justinbieber is up to. Or @thegrugq.

You see, under Twitter’s unpretentious, folksy texture lies an unfathomably deep network of UGC (user generated content) and other information that makes other platforms seem, well, a bit limited.

Within Twitter you can find links to all the major platforms: Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube.

Skilled marketers can build out B2B content to their heart's content on various platforms and then connect them all to Twitter. Or, you can just use Twitter on its own and fill your Twitter channel with loads of great stuff. There is no shortage of content on Twitter!

Pop Quiz: how often do the #1 and #2 digital marketers in the world tweet?

Answer: Every 15 minutes and every 2 minutes. Are you surprised to learn that @jeffbullas tweets 96 times every day and my good friend @sam___hurley tweets 720 times per day? That's a lot of tweeting! But that's what Twitter is built for. Tweeting. If you looked at Twitter's feed you would never know that.

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I did not arrive at the conclusion that Twitter is superior without first investing a considerable amount of time and resources. I will also tell you, honestly, that I did not set out to reach this conclusion (or any other for that matter) nor did I learn until very recently that this conclusion is, in fact, supported by research. 

For me, the whole process of learning Twitter has been a mixture of reward and disappointment: two steps forward and then one foot caught in a hidden pothole of cold dirty water. It takes a while to dry off!

Meanwhile there’s Snapchat strutting around like MTV with business leaders like Ryan Holmes falling for that ridiculous face-in-the-ghost-thing. Every time I see that ghost with someone’s smushed up face I think “but why...?” But good for Snapchat! I hear the best way to get followers on Snapchat is to get your Twitter followers to follow you. Now that Twitter has launched its own auto-tweeter I don't know what to use Hootsuite for. I guess that's why Ryan Holmes put his face in the Snapchat ghost!

And now: a short intermission about Twitter search.

SEARCHING FOR THE PURPLE GORILLA

For recent results, Twitter search is much more relevant than Google. Did you know 68% of Twitter users get their news only from Twitter? That’s because Twitter is an amazing aggregator. That's another way to say that Twitter’s strength is its ability to pull together disparate sources and present them by channel, #hashtag or however else you want to view and search stuff. For this reason it’s easy to get lost wandering around until you find yourself reading about something completely different (there are a lot of really smart and interesting people on Twitter).

The thing I have learned about Twitter search is that it is impervious to those SEO devils who have gamed Google so much that I can no longer know with confidence if that itch underneath my ribcage is liver disease or something worse! Or, if the Brangelinas are really getting divorced.

Google search fails me often -- especially for phone numbers that I don’t recognize. Like, what is up with looking up phone numbers on Google? It is sketchy!

You know what I’m talking about here: for me, Steve Yanor, Google search results have become less relevant. So I seek other ways to find non-sponsored information that’s not Bing or Google-driven. Guess what I’m left with? Twitter. And it works pretty well, thank you very much.

The thing is, once you start using Twitter for search you start using it for other things. Like everything.

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Then you find yourself doing everything inside Twitter. Why go anywhere else when you get everything from Twitter? Especially for business news. Or to see the new outfits Lululemon made for the Canadian volleyball team!

Twitter vs. Google search: Twitter excels on mobile

Twitter is superior because Twitter users invariably include links in their own micro-channels from sources such as Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, even Snapchat...we saw that earlier. Twitter is (and always has been) a mobile-first platform.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Brands that know what they’re doing use Twitter as communications HQ because Twitter naturally links to everything. And it's for grownups. Important point: demographic is 22+

Successful brands recognize the value of Twitter. They also recognize a lot of other things. It's not just Twitter's low-cost, high reach marketing and advertising capabilities but Twitter's ability to manage risk. Successful brands dedicate at least one person to Twitter so that the Twitter community doesn’t manage their brand for them. Sometimes people say stuff that’s not true and all that.

It’s very much like - no, it’s exactly like - the way the stock market works: Company X predicts they’re going to make Y amount of money by day Z. If the investment community disagrees and the investment community is correct, Company X will be punished on exactly day Y. And sometimes that punishment is so brutal it's medieval! Case in point:

Did you know that in February LinkedIn’s stock price dropped 42% in one day?! True story. And that’s when Microsoft decided “hmm LinkedIn looks like a good bargain right now considering it’s 42% off!!” Wall Street punished LinkedIn so hard that LinkedIn’s management agreed they’d better not let that happen again. Personal fortunes are at stake!

The reason LinkedIn’s stock dropped so much is because the investment community has some serious pull when it comes to making stocks rise and fall. Just like the Twitter community has some serious pull when it comes to determining the future of someone’s brand equity. Instagram – not so much. Facebook: you bet. But everyone knows Facebook is for consumers and Twitter is for business brands and consumers. Business news breaks on Twitter, not Facebook.

For someone who knows the value of communications (not to mention free advertising!), Twitter is a dream come true.

Here’s a pop quiz: think of an entertainer. Anyone, it doesn’t matter: singer, band, comedian. Now: go on Twitter and find that entertainer. See what I mean? They’re there, right? And they have lots of followers, right? People love to hate on Twitter the platform but the actual platform is doing just fine, thank you very much.

Twitter’s ability to manage their platform and the expectations of its users, however, is a completely different story. See a few paragraphs above for how it’s worked out so far.

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As all Twitter loyalists know, there will always be hope for Twitter. We know this because whenever there’s a big sudden event – something terrible (shootings!) – or something great (Pride parade!) People turn to Twitter to search for the latest [in flashing letters] news.

If you’ve ever searched Twitter because news on TV is sooo lame (and there are commercials) and radio is pretty much useless for real-time news – you understand what I’m talking about. No other platform comes close to delivering the spectrum of up-to-the-minute updates to a global audience like Twitter does. Which is why CNN seems to be taking over: they’ve completely embraced Twitter. I would bet that Twitter loyalists are okay with that! Go ahead and broadcast your up-to-the-minute-professional news updates on Twitter! Please! 

As an aside, did you know that Twitter’s technology is built on 911 mobile packet routing which makes it pretty much unrivaled at making sure messages get to where they need to go? 

SO WHY DO PEOPLE LIKE TO TRASH TALK TWITTER?

I am guilty of the same thing! I think it’s part of a (long) initiation ritual. I have trash-talked Twitter like I was going to leave it forever! Which I have. On numerous occasions.

Out there in the Twittersphere are accounts that I have closed because they weren’t going anywhere (the egg hadn’t been removed yet) or because I made a rookie mistake in public and it just wasn’t worth returning.It's easier to start over!

THE HARD LESSONS

For those of you familiar with Google’s approach to users of its AdWords product, you know how Google treats people. The fact is, Twitter is a lot more like Google than it is liked LinkedIn, so the following analogy is not wildly inappropriate.

When you work at an agency or marketing firm, the one thing you learn about Google is that Google really wants you to learn Google. It certifies you. It gives you free training. It invites you to the Google community and smothers you with more e-mails than you’ll ever read. In short, Google is all over you. The smothering works!

Twitter, on the other hand, is more like a mysterious millennial who is supposed to be working during the summer but instead stays in the basement all day doing who-knows-what because there’s a child support payment that is predicated on that mysterious millennial not working. Except in Twitter’s case, of course, there is no child support payment. Those days are over. Time to grow up Twitter! But for Twitter, apparently, growing up is hard to do.

Recall Twitter's conference call that looked like a hostage video? That was two conference calls ago. Here's a tweet from their most recent call:

So instead of Twitter simply fixing the staging, it abandoned its product and avoided filming a video altogether! Whoa! No one saw that coming!

I include these Tweets of Twitter’s investor calls for two reasons: first, they support the point that Twitter has its hands full with Wall Street. And secondly, it has its hands full with Wall Street because it doesn’t know what it’s doing with Wall Street. Out of fairness I repeat that this is common with newly public companies. But whoever is advising Twitter: maybe find some help?

Like, institutional investors took one look at that first conference call and said: wow, these guys look like a startup, but worse! And then the next conference call rolls around and they say: What? Twitter wants to be a live video company and it can’t film its own investor call? 

It just doesn’t make any sense. But what does make sense is that if Twitter can’t organize its own video call, it sure isn’t going to be very helpful to anyone else!

There's a saying In the Roadshow business: if you can’t make a meeting on time, how are you going to hit your numbers on time?

Meaning: your investor meetings are a microcosm of the larger picture. You need team members two through eight back in the office doing the work while you're out managing expectations. Full-time. Do you know how many days GE is on the road meeting with investors? I know, but I'm not allowed to tell you. All I'll say is that it's a lot.

Investors see management teams come and go all the time and after a one-on-one meeting and an earnings call, investors know which way the wind is blowing. This is just another way of saying that Twitter probably just needs a little freshening up! Then everything will be hunky dory.

So learning Twitter has been tough because Twitter sure hasn’t helped.

INFLUENCERS ON TWITTER

Thankfully, there are people on Twitter who are influencers. I use that word cautiously because I fear the influencer label has gotten out of hand lately. Even Nasdaq is getting in on the influencer action! Here’s what I mean:

What's a stock exchange doing in the influencer business? Shouldn’t they be, I dunno, busy with a dark pool?

Some people have lots of followers on Twitter: Justin Bieber, Madonna, Katy Perry. We’re not concerned with those people. They were influencers before Twitter, although Twitter has enhanced their largesse considerably, as have the other platforms.

Who we’re talking about here are the business people on Twitter that have a lot of followers: Vala Afshar, CDE of Salesforce (134,000 followers) or Jack Dorsey CEO of Twitter (3.7M followers). My point is: just because someone has a lot of followers doesn’t necessarily make them an influencer. Why? Because they do not interact with anyone on Twitter! Being an influencer on Twitter means that you have to actually engage with people on Twitter. Not all the time, but regularly.

(There’s another class of influencers that are deemed influencers by other, real influencers but these faux influencers almost always fail to live up to their title because they just can’t put up the numbers or bother to engage.)

And this is when we get to the part of how to solve Twitter’s one and only problem. After that, we're gold!

Twitter, my dear and loyal reader, has an identity crisis. It is one part incredible news platform, one part real-time search engine, one part soapbox, one part TV sidekick, one part miracle, and one part chat channel. All of these descriptions simply describe what distinct user classes on Twitter want out of Twitter.

It is a good thing that Twitter is many things to so many people.

So now let me ask you this:

What do you think is a better business model?

250 people with 20 million followers or 250 million people with 5,000 followers?

This:                             or this:

Kanye West: followed by 20 million, but following 1.

Sam Hurley: followed by 138k, and following 50k.

The future of Twitter may depend on the difference between this:

As a platform Twitter wants to be a credible source of news and entertainment. That’s why Twitter allocates a little blue check mark to approximately .06% of the Twitter population that it feels “to be of public interest”. The flip side of this is that Twitter denies little blue checkmarks to tens of thousands of loyal users who actually want that little blue check mark!

Do you know how people feel when Twitter denies them the little blue check mark? Like the checkmark - they're ticked off! This is a hot topic in TwitterLand.

Ticking off loyal users creates the opposite of goodwill. Which is not badwill, exactly. It is just bad.

With 250 million monthly active users (MAU) and only 100 of them really “famous” why deny so many with the experience of truly having a following? I mean, come on Twitter! It should be their mission statement:

We will do everything we can to help people have lots of followers if that is what they desire.

When it comes to verifying someone’s account, most companies (Google, for example) send you a postcard in the mail and then stick a little “Verified” label on your account once they know you have received the PIN. That seems reasonable. But not Twitter. No. Twitter lists eight criteria and then it denies your request even though you have met the criteria.

THE OTHER THING I LEARNED THE HARD WAY ABOUT TWITTER

When you first sign up with Twitter, what’s the first thing you are asked to do? Follow people, right? Yes. That’s right. Twitter asks you to follow people.

Twitter, as a platform, is based on Following. Of some sort. Depending on the kind of person you are (there are many media people on Twitter) you sort of fall into one of two camps, from a philisophical-following-standpoint. Either you:

i) follow or be followed; or

ii) follow and be followed.

Remember those Latin phrases? Those are the Latin translations (from Google) of the above English. It is the single word – “and” or “or” – that highlights Twitter’s internal struggle. It’s all about engagement.

Kanye West uses his Twitter channel to sell shoes. Sam Hurley uses his Twitter channel to support other marketers and sell stuff.

It seems to me a pretty good business plan for Twitter would be to provide the means and ways necessary so that the average user can Follow lots of people and also attract lots of followers. That seems like a good way to grow the business! Hey, it worked for LinkedIn.

But Twitter does not do this. Twitter does not provide the ways and means to follow lots of great users and to be followed in return. It’s weird!

Why Twitter chooses not to provide the average user with any special tools, intelligence or rapid APIs to attract lots of followers, nor suggest people to follow that – gasp – might actually follow you back if you follow them is beyond me.

This kind of a change in strategy that would obviously yield great benefits in terms of growing the business. Some might even call this “upside”.

20,000,000 to the power of 100 = 1.26 + 730 zeros

250,000,000 to the power of 5,000 = astronomically larger than the calculation above.

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HOW TO GET FOLLOWERS ON TWITTER LEARNED BY DIGGING IN TRENCHES AND SUCH

Without Twitter’s expert assistance, I was left to my own devices to find lots of followers in a short period of time. I went to the library and read every book on Twitter. I'm not kidding. But mostly I spent a lot of time on Twitter connecting with many Twitter experts.

Here's what I learned.

There are certain milestones you need to get to before you’re able to do much of anything on Twitter (which is why it’s a shame they don’t help you get there; there must be a high percentage of accounts that give up because they feel like no one wants to follow them). 1,000 is really the starting point. That's when Twitter starts to get interesting.And valuable as a small business marketing tool.

Tips to get 1,000 followers:

1. Set up your account properly. If you are new to Twitter, click on edit profile and write a biography that starts with **New account** so that people know there’s a reason you have no followers. Now: ask yourself: what are you really interested in? Science? Tennis? Hypnotism? Hacking? War memorabilia? Ornithology? Write down three things you’re interested in and then include three hashtags of the things you like in your bio. This will signal to people what your interests are. (i.e. #science geek, #tennis #birdlover). Include a link to your LinkedIn or Google+ profile.

You absolutely must use a picture. Remove the dreaded egg! Then replace that big area above the picture (masthead) with something else. Just upload something you find at Flickr.com with the option “commercial use and mods allowed”. Once you have your bio, picture and masthead, you are ready to attract a loyal following!

2. Know what you want to Tweet ahead of time. There is more content on Twitter than you could ever read in your lifetime. For this reason, you shouldn’t have a hard time finding things that you find interesting. Every night before I go to bed I schedule Tweets for the next morning. I use Twitter search to find relevant stuff.

In the morning I do the same thing again, but this time I use Feedly to find articles. Feedly is an app on my phone. It’s great. You enter topics and then it returns the most recent articles. The best thing is, you can connect Feedly to Buffer. Once you do that, you are a true Tweetmeister! Or Tweetmeistress, as the case may be.

I paste the URLs of stuff that I find interesting (articles, webpages, YouTube videos) into Notepad. I know -- notepad seems low tech but it never crashes and it converts any hidden weird stuff into plaintext. Then...(this is important) I describe what I find interesting about the thing I am linking to. I always try to include the original author, if possible.

3. Try to keep your tweets to 100 characters. To grow your network of followers it is important that people retweet your tweets! This is why you need to write your own headlines and not simply re-tweet things that people have already tweeted. Originality is key, even if you are simply commenting on something.

4. Tweet a lot. At least 5 times per day. More if you can. You will get better and better at it. Tweet every day, at least five times per day for two weeks! Always use at least one #hashtag. Include other usernames. Use a scheduler like Buffer and then you can tweet up to ten items on a pre-scheduled basis for free! Buffer works great with Feedly! 

The reason you want to include a #hashtag and @username is because people on Twitter are much more likely to see your Tweet if it has a hashtag or Twitter handle. If you include the author’s name, they will often follow you back or even re-tweet what you tweeted about them.

5. Follow a lot of people. I advise you to follow as many people as Twitter allows you to follow. You will hit a limit. At first it’s around 500. Whatever you do, make sure you have Tweeted lots of interesting stuff before you start following hundreds of people! It really is important.

If you have set up your bio with hashtags and have designated the account as new, and you follow lots of people, you will start attracting followers. Twitter actually gets fun to use once you hit 1,000 followers. I think that’s when some kind of innate reward gets triggered that someone else can explain.

Now, here’s how you find good people to follow.

The best and fastest way is to use lists. Twitter lists are not well explained anywhere so I will tell you what you need to know about lists and why they are super helpful for finding good people to follow. My view is that good people to follow are people that are interested in the same things as you, but might also follow you back. Quid pro quo.

Let’s use ornithology as an example. I love birds but I just haven’t spent enough time to learn more about these amazing animals...yet! (#bucketlist)

Here’s a search for #ornithology. Click on “all Tweets” to see the most recent one. A bunch of tweets come up. Let’s look at the top two and follow people who are following these accounts!

This is the fastest way to get new followers: find a relevant account and then follow their followers.

First, on the left: we searched for #ornithology and the top hit was The Condor: @CondorJournal. Cool.

This is an account that discusses the Condor species of bird.

(I mean, how awesome is Twitter, right?)

To see who follows The Condor, Click on 3,100 Followers.

Now we will follow a whole bunch of people who also follow The Condor. This is because you have ornithology in common with these people - at least at some level. If condors aren’t your cup of tea, you can also try searching for other birds and follow people who follow them. The idea is to find people who are involved with the same subjects that you tweet about and to follow them. That’s the way you build a community.

Scanning lists of followers are nice because the list is laid out so you can quickly click click click.

If you search for people one at a time. It’s too inefficient. By using a list of followers, you can easily follow 100 people in five minutes which is what you need to do to grow your following.

One important note about following people is that it’s better to follow people that actually have pictures rather than logos although sometimes companies will follow back, too.

If you’ve reached this far, thanks for being you. Send me a tweet or visit me on Twitter!

About Steve Yanor (@skyalphabet)

Steve is the founder of Vancouver social media agency Sky Alphabet. When he’s not on Twitter he’s thinking about Twitter. Author of a book on corporate finance.