Gary Leland Show Episode 16
This week I talk about Twitter with Gary Loper of GaryLoper.com – Produced By PodcastRepairman.com
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Leland: Gary thanks for joining me on the show!
Loper: It’s my pleasure! It’s my mission to help people understand what Twitter is and how they can utilize it in their lives and businesses.
Leland: I was asking around to find out who the Twitter expert would be that I could interview and your name came up several times, so I found you there at twitter.com/garyloper and you have 129,000 followers. That’s an expert mode to me!
Loper: I got on early and found ways to get people on there to follow me, by providing great information and I will provide some of those tips along the way. There are some secrets in there of ways to do things, which is one of the services I provide to my clients, is managing their accounts to be able to attract followers and create a bigger audience.
Leland: With so much social media it’s hard to find time to do it all.
Loper: A complication with that are all of the rabbit holes you can fall into. You can probably do all of the things you need to do on Twitter in 2 twenty-minute segments a day if you have less than 50,000 followers. All you have to do is go on, post a few tweets, retweet a few things, comment on a couple of tweets, and you have an established presence. When you start to head above 50,000, it will start to take more time and you may have to train someone on your staff who is familiar with what you are trying to do and allow them to answer tweets in your voice, which is very hard to do. I always tell my clients that the voice is the authentic part of the business that a lot of people don’t realize. This is a people-to-people business and people want to connect with a live person who is the voice of the company.
Leland: So do you think that is why my Twitter is so low? I just send out content basically. I have 22,000 followers, but only follow 23 people.
Loper: What you would look at is that a lot of people are doing the same thing, using a broadcast method. Those niche people who are attracted to your material are going to come and find it but they may not be looking for engagement. If you want to build your business on Twitter, I look at social media as having leveled the playing field. A great example is that I am a student to Bob Berg who is a good friend of mine and business partner. He has the golden rule of business networking, which is a very important thing to remember: all things being equal, people are going to do business with and refer business to people they know, like, and trust. With social media, we have the opportunity with the personal engagement and way that we tweet that creates and unequal advantage in our favor. When they have a need for our products and services, we are in the front of their mind. What’s great is that if you build that rapport and build a larger audience, that if your audience does not need you, but you have built that relationship with them, they are going to be able to refer you to the people that they know which leads to exponential growth in marketing aspects.
Leland: When you say it like that it becomes common sense.
Loper: There are a lot of marketers on social media now who use those 1960’s sales tactics of broadcasting the product. Again, consumers have so many options both on and off line, so you have to make that connection and give them a reason to connect with you. Another important thing to consider is extending your personality. I have a client who is a coach, but is a really big Star Wars fan as well. One day he tweeted some Star Wars quotes and he started to make connections with people based on Star Wars because there was a common bridge. People, whether for business or personal needs, are always looking for a connection and validation. If we give them a little bit of a seed of who we are or why they can connect with us, then it is just like a magnet that got turned on.
Leland: Let’s start with some details. I have our pages side by side right now. You have over 100,000 followers and also follow over 100,000 people. Are you saying that I need to start following people so I can interact with them? Because I only follow 23 people, I’m not interacting with a lot of people who follow me.
Loper: Right, because you can only see the post from those 23 people and you want to be able to interact with some of the people who followed you by following them back. Even determine who your audience and market is and start to attract them to your page and start to follow them back. I think when people see account disparities like that; they think that the owner of that page is not interested in having a conversation with anyone. I really believe that Twitter is so important because it touches people. Any audience you go to, about half of them who have their heads down and are taking notes. The same thing is true on Twitter. The number I heard is that 40% of all active users, which is around 300 million a day, are observing. They are watching us to see how we interact with other people because the way that I interact with my audience is probably how I will interact with them. That creates the unequal advantage because they may want to work with me or refer me based on that.
Leland: I guess my first step is to go to my followers list, because they already like what I post, and start to follow them back and get involved with them. If I start to do that then they will be more inclined to refer me to other people.
Loper: Absolutely. You will be able to go into your notifications column and you will be able to see who has retweeted your posts and who has favorited your posts. Those are the people who you should be following back first because they are already showing you that they support what you are doing and what you are putting out there. Back in the early days of Twitter I would spend probably an hour a day thanking each person who retweeted, mentioned, and commented to me. I think that is what differentiated me from everyone else. People saw that I took the time to interact with them and that helped me from the beginning.
Leland: I noticed on your Twitter page, that your header has all of your information.
Loper: This is probably where I spend the most time with my clients for the first half of our time together working on the first impression. If someone clicks onto your site, you have 4 to 10 seconds who you are, what you do, what you can do for them, and what they can do next. A lot of people just have a pretty picture up there that they haven’t updated in two years. We restated our profile to the center of that banner because the profile is below the picture and not really with natural eye movement. It’s also important that the profile is also SEO, so the words you put on that profile, should be the same words you use on your website because you assume that if someone does an Internet search for you they will put those same words in the search engine. If people don’t see a reason to stick around and interact with you, they will move on because it is all about them and what interests them. We have to be focused on what is in it for that client or customer. What problems are they looking to solve and if we address the way we tweet, it gives them more reason so stay and check us out.
Leland: You mentioned earlier that for those of us with smaller accounts, we should spend 2 twenty-minute sessions on Twitter. What exactly should we be doing and in what amounts?
Loper: You should spend that time retweeting other people’s content about 5-7 times because it shows your audience that it is not all about you and that you will share good content that is not yours. I share a lot of the motivational quotes because those enhance people’s lives. A way to do this easily is to start making lists of people who consistently put out great content. That way I can go to the list when I need something to retweet and don’t have to spend a long time trying to find it. I have several different lists based upon interest, so some lists are bigger than others.
Leland: I sure like your header with this information and links on here. You have short links for free books you give out and I assume that when they follow the link to get the book they sign up for your mailing list as well. On the right here it says Gary’s Networking Party, what’s that?
Loper: A Twitter party is an incredible way to build and audience, build rapport, build a presence, and build a community. It’s basically like a chat room from back in the day, where people would join a conversation about a topic they have an interest in. What we do once a month is a two-hour Twitter party, which are all themed. You follow the party by hash tag. My hash tag is #GLTP, which Twitter uses as a search tool. This is one of the things I love about Twitter is that it’s a huge networking event. When you go to a networking event, you don’t spend all day trying to figure out what every little cluster of people are talking about. You try to find the conversation people are having over a topic you want to learn more about or you want to add to. Twitter works the same way when you use the search box because you can narrow down to the conversation you want to have. I think that is where a lot of people get frustrated is by trying to keep up with everything instead of focusing on what you are interested in.
Leland: So since I am a huge fan of softball, I should look up #softball a couple of times a day to see who is talking about it and what they are talking about.
Loper: Yes absolutely, and you can save that to your lists so it’s waiting for you every day to look at.
Leland: So you’re saying that anyone who is trying to market online is missing the boat if they are not working Twitter for a little bit of time every day?
Loper: Yes it is. It has grown exponentially since the beginning. Some of the numbers I saw on marketing estimates said that by 2020 Internet marketing should increase by 500%. If you’re not on now and creating the presence, carving a niche, and building the relationships with these potential customers and referring ambassadors, you will be way behind when the rest of the world gets on. You have to establish yourself and your business. You will struggle trying to catch up by that time; it’s already hard to catch up!
Leland: What is the secret on being found on Twitter?
Loper: In your profile, you want to have the words people would use in and Internet search to find you, you want to use those hash tags, and you want to put up links for a new blog 5 to 6 times after you put it up, not just once. The reason for that is because we are trying to connect with people in their search to solve their problems. When we blog, the title can have one of two responses: tell me more or so what. You probably look at your email and 95% of it is under the so what category. Look at your blog post and pick out a few different things that people could be looking for because that is what they will search for. Make sure your profile is recent and has a picture because it makes you real as a person. Your business logo may resonate with you but it doesn’t necessarily with your audience. Let your smile be your logo and let them connect with you that way.
Leland: How does sharing a tweet make me get found by other people? Doesn’t it just get shared with my people who already follow me?
Loper: If I find your tweet that you shared and I share it, then my followers might go check you out because it says that I retweeted that tweet from you. It’s important to remember that every tweet is like a mini web page, so it will always be there. Twitter now has a deal with Google that tweets will be Google indexed, so a lot of the tweets will show up in Google searches if you use those SEO keywords. Retweeting is also a way to show people who your mentors are and who has influenced you. Figure out what you purpose is going to be on Twitter and stick with it.
Leland: That makes much more sense to me; that’s a double win to me!
Loper: Your lists also can show who you are. I would have more lists of other things that I am interested in, but they are not in line with my online persona. Sometimes I even have who would be deemed competitors in a list so I can see what they are doing. I want to see what they are doing well so I can do it better and I want to see what they are not doing at all so I can exceed them. Another good use is if you want to follow a celebrity because they don’t follow a lot of people back. If you put them in a list, you don’t have to follow them and they won’t count against Twitter’s 10% rule.
Leland: What is the 10% rule; I’m not sure what that is.
Loper: When you first get on Twitter, you can follow as many people as you want until you get to 2,000. When you get to 2,000, then the people who are following you back has to be in a 10% ratio with those you are following in order to follow any more people. So if you’re following 2,000 people, 1,801 have to be following you back to add one more person. This is one of the things I share in my e-book, “Mastering the Twitterverse”, which you can get at garyloper.com in the center column. With any list in business, 1/3 of the list is outdated and the same thing happens on Twitter. 1/3 of the people who are following me on Twitter are no longer there or no longer active. You want to be able to flush those people out so you can work with that 10% rule. I give some pointers in the book of how to flush those people out of your account.
Leland: That makes perfect sense. You have given me a lot of great information today. It sounds like to me that it would be smart for people to get the free e-books and newsletter from you. That doesn’t hurt anyone.
Loper: If you’re serious about learning how to get the most out of your Twitter account and see what’s next for you, then I would like to offer a free 30 minute consultation where we look at your page and see how we can improve your Twitter persona. If you go to bit.ly/ReviewTwitter you can get on my calendar to schedule a time to take a look at your Twitter. If you feel that it is something you want to go forward with, then we can partner up and move forward together.
Leland: Thank you for coming on and talking to me today. We already know we can reach you on twitter.com/garyloper and on garyloper.com. Is there anything else you would like to direct people to or let them know about?
Loper: That is the best way to find me. If you go to my website and click the contact button you can email me directly.
If you have a question send it to me at GaryLeland@gmail.com
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