Week 11

 Marketing with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Social Influencers

Twitter...

is hard. Twitter is public, active, time-consuming, and very difficult to do well. Twitter is also very active. The life of a tweet is 15-25 minutes, so Twitter engagement means at least 5-7 tweets per day, not including responses. Twitter is public. Every tweet is seen by everybody, so every comment has to be addressed. For all of that Twitter only ranks 16th in total active users per month.

  Twitter does have some advantages though. 80% of Twitter users are between 18 and 50. Over 50% are in the premium 25-50 age group that has the most available money to spend. Twitter is the 4th most popular social media site in the United States. Twitter users are also some of the most active per day. Marketing is all about reaching the right market. If your target market is 25-50 years old, active on social media daily, and lives in the United States, Twitter may be perfect. https://www.statista.com/statistics/283119/age-distribution-of-global-twitter-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/248074/most-popular-us-social-networking-apps-ranked-by-audience/ https://dustinstout.com/social-media-statistics/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/

  Twitter is the king of options. Twitter allows plain text tweets. Twitter also allows all sorts of graphic media. Videos are allowed, and highly effective, but are limited in size and quality. Graphics likewise are recommended, but limited in scope. GIFs (pronounced GIF) are also perfect for Twitter. In the land of short and simple content, short and simple content wins. Twitter also allows links, some platforms don't. 

  Twitter is the primary creator of hashtags and they still are incredibly important on the platform. You don't need a lot, but you definitely need to find the most relevant. 1 to 3 is usually the best, more than than drives down engagement and confuses users. Make a point, stick to it, and use appropriate hashtags to enforce your point. Twitter is hard, but it can be used highly effectively to hit highly engaged, highly lucrative targeted markets: for better or worse, it got a President elected.

LinkedIn...

is for professionals. LinkedIn is a great place for professional networking. As a career advancement tool, it is unrivaled in social media. Likewise, for companies looking for employees, it has tremendous advantages. LinkedIn has an extensive collection of professionals in many fields that are all interconnected. It can be a great way to advance in your current field or in a similar field. 

  LinkedIn's profile functions a lot like a digital resume. It includes educational achievements, past employment, personal referrals, current training, and even a pre-built interview beginning. Everything you post on LinkedIn needs to be viewed as just that, a potential interview introduction. More and more businesses are reviewing social media activity prior to hiring an employee, and LinkedIn is already perfectly suited to viewing you through the lens of employment. Past teachers, students, co-workers, employers and managers are all connected to you (or maybe should be). A connection on LinkedIn works like something of an implicit referral, so too can missing connections.

  Treat LinkedIn like a constant job interview. That may just be how it is viewed by your next prospective employer or employee.


Influencers...

are still being figured out. Real statistics on social media influencers can be hard to find, but the trends aren't. Marketers spent $5B in 2018 on social media influencers. That number climbed to $10B in 2020 and is going up from there. On the flipside, only 51% of marketers that use influencers said that they were more effective than their own campaigns.

  Influencers are cheap and relatively easy to track; if you do it right. The key driver of influencers is ROI. Influencers are cheaper than traditional marketing. Influencers have a built-in audience, and a strong rapport with that audience. Influencers have a pre-existing strategy for product endorsement. Influencers have pre-existing graphics styles and media production. That means that influencers need freedom, but also need guidance. They need to appear genuine to their followers, but they also need to stick to brand messaging and values.

Influencers can be great for brand awareness, but tend to be clunky for targeted ads. Influencers can be great for contests or referral drives, but those items need to be created, guided, and tracked by a company's marketing staff. That means that influencers may be a great add-on, but they aren't replacing traditional marketing departments any time soon.

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