Erin Blaskie | Digital Vanguard, Speaker & Content Producer » Twitter

A Retweet Changed How I Use Twitter

Erin Blaskie — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:02:17 +0000

It took me a few weeks to finally write this blog post and I held off on blogging about it because I didn’t want it to contain angst or snark. I wanted it to have a few really great lessons and a-ha moments based on what I experienced. Some people may just sweep a story like this under the rug and pretend that it never happened (or never happens ever) but the truth of the matter is, people are going to do things and say things that you may not particularly enjoy and it is up to you to decide how you want to handle it. I hope this story allows you to see that mistakes will happen regardless of how social media proficient you are.

The Backstory

Let me back up a wee bit to one gorgeous, sunny afternoon a few weeks ago. I was walking down the road, enjoying the warmth and the nature and all of the goodness that was surrounding me, and decided to pull out my iPhone to check my Twitter feed. I read through the Tweets, laughing in response to some of the replies from friends when suddenly, I was punched in the gut. Hard.

A colleague of mine, from the same city I live in, retweeted one of my Tweets and added “puke” to the front of my Tweet. That was it, just a simple “puke” but the idea that my Tweet was vomit inducing was enough to stop me dead in my tracks. I replied to the person with a bit of humor and the response I received was even more gut punching than the first one. This person, that I had never met in person, told me that my over the top social media nonsense was what had induced this vomiting fit.

After receiving those Tweets, I was admittedly a bit shocked and sad and embarrassed and all sorts of emotions, as I had just been called out in a room full of my peers (Twitter) for social media douchebaggery. What made a bad scenario even worse was seeing other colleagues, also based out of the same city I live in, partake in the conversation and poke fun at me. Those extra Tweets weren’t directed right at me but I’m savvy enough on ye olde Twitter to find the related conversations.

The context of my Tweet had been changed. The wording was changed, the URL had been removed and the retweet now left me standing there with my pants down (well, not really with my pants down but it was every bit as scary as it would be had I been standing in a crowd with my pants down). However, given some time to reflect on the entire situation, this person was partially justified. Perhaps it would have been better for that individual to address it privately but either way, it changed my social media course.

Testing Grounds

You see, I’m a HUGE advocate of using social media for your business. It’s what I do for my clients, it is what I do for myself and I am always talking about it, teaching it or yelling from the rooftops about how important it is. However, you can’t speak on the subject and teach other people about the subject if you aren’t constantly testing the tool. So, I test. A lot.

Some people may argue that using my own Twitter account to test out various social media “tactics” is social media suicide and I suppose it is in a way. I fully understand that by testing out different tweets, timing of tweets, structure of tweets, etc., I may risk losing a follower or two. However, that it is the price I am willing to pay to fully understand the tool that I am using and touting. I can’t perform the service for my clients without having tried the tactics that they are going to ask me to implement for them.

Everything I do in business is an experiment. I don’t walk the “safe” line but rather push the boundaries a bit. I see what people enjoy and don’t enjoy and, as you can see in the backstory above, people DO tell me. Loud and clear. However, I need to realize that unless people know what it is I am doing, I may cause people to disengage.

I also think that this is the case with many entrepreneurs. By nature, we are all experimenting with things as there is no giant book of golden rules that we are supposed to follow. As long as we are standing in a place of being authentic and sharing our message in the best way we know how, we are headed in the right direction and we are bound to make mistakes along the way.

What I Did Wrong on Twitter

At this point in my post, you might be wondering to yourself, “What did you do wrong?” and I will tell you what I think happened.

I don’t write all of my Tweets live. I know, I know – there are social media purists out there who will fall on the floor after reading that. However, all of my more personal and in the moment Tweets, my @ replies, my DMs and my retweets are written by me and in the exact moment the message is Tweeted. However, I do use Hootsuite to preschedule a few Tweets where I am sharing dated / timely information or sending out tips / recommendations that I want to make but don’t want to send them all at once, at 11pm at night.

Before I received the Tweet, the one that punched me in the gut, I had prescheduled some Tweets that pointed back to my old blog content. It was still relevant information and I figured that since I had received a lot of new followers since that content was written, they might benefit from reading the old material. None of the URLs I was linking to were salesy or required someone to have to purchase anything — it was just to blog posts that I had written that shared info on different topics.

One of those blog posts that I linked to was a response to a question I received from Scott Annan who asked, “I see you giving so much of yourself online, for free, how do you do it?” The post explained why I did it and how and explained that I love answering questions and providing people with solutions, yada yada yada… So, my Tweet that day quoted one line from that post. However, it wasn’t necessarily the best line to use from the post or summarize the context of the post well.

My mistake was assuming that people, including the retweeter of my Tweet, would take the time to read the post.

I realized, in that moment, that a Tweet needed to stand on its own without people needing to click through the link and if the Tweet could be taken out of context, it needed to be edited to suit Twitter’s medium. Proof that not all content is acceptable for each medium.

What I’ve Changed Since Then

Since that fateful day, I’ve since taken much more time when crafting messages through my prescheduled and in the moment Tweets. The day that I received that eye-opening Tweet, I went into Hootsuite and deleted everything (hours and hours of work) and decided that from then on, I needed to be clearer with my messages and ensure that the Tweet stood on its own leaving zero room for misinterpretation. I wanted to ensure that all of my future Tweet context didn’t need to be gathered through the link that I was attaching but was rather obvious, right there in the 140 characters allotted.

The entire situation gave me time to pause and reflect on how I was using the tool and what role it played for me in the bigger picture. Twitter, much like other social media tools, is just that — a tool. It is up to us to figure out how we should be individually using it to suit our life / business purpose. However, we need to be mindful of the messages we are sending and ensure that it is of great value and benefit to those listening to us.

A Note to the Retweeter

If you do get a chance to read this, I want to apologize to you. There are times in my business, and in my life, where I try something out and it doesn’t go the way I envisioned it to. There are times when my message on the Internet doesn’t line up with who I am as a human being – regardless of how hard I try to ensure that it does. 140 characters can sometimes be a difficult use of space for spreading messages and sharing free content and as much as I try to please everyone, I do end up failing at times.

I am a natural born experimenter and one of my favorite questions to ask is, “Why?” I like to know how things work and I like to understand the pros and cons to doing things a certain way. This means that I am going to naturally try something that doesn’t work and I’m going to do things in a way that isn’t appealing to the masses. However, I am doing my best. It’s all that any of us can do — do our best and hope that what we are doing helps someone, resonates with someone and reaches the intended audience.

Thank you for pushing me to take pause and really evaluate my own use of the tool. I wish it had come in a different format that wasn’t as embarrassing as it was, but at the end of the day, I learned the lesson and that is all that matters.

Arkli: Finally, a Social Media Manager I Can Get Behind

Erin Blaskie — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:16:14 +0000

A few weeks ago, I was approached by Mike Potter of Arkli. He wanted to get me on the phone to show me the latest and greatest in social media campaign managers. I nearly blew him off. I get a TON of requests to review and look at web tools and most of them end up being a tool that will not provide value to my day-to-day life.

Mike and I scheduled a time to chat and he started showing me Arkli in action via webinar. It was probably the fifth or sixth minute in that I wanted to just tell him, “Stop talking. Where do I sign up?!” I begged Mike to let me be the one to share the tool with the world because seriously, you’re all going to thank me later… and I love mint chocolate anything and my shoe size is a 7.5! Just saying.

Arkli is a tool that lets you manage your social media campaigns. I know, I know. You’ve seen and heard it all when it comes to managing social media right? Wrong. SO wrong.

What Arkli Does

Arkli lets you import all of your social media accounts, your blogs, your e-mail marketing program (they have a short list right now but it does include MailChimp*! Win!), your YouTube account and your Google Analytics into the interface. Once all of your accounts are in the system and setup, you now have the ultimate power tool in your hands.

Arkli connects seamlessly to WordPress to allow you to craft a blog post. Then, with the click of a button, you can turn your blog post into a Tweet using whichever account you want. Then, with the click of another button, you can turn it into a Facebook update. Then, you can retweet yourself from a different account (yes, with the click of a button) and you can have it all tracked in their nifty built-in statistics tracker.

Not only that, the tool has ways to manipulate current websites for your full advantage. For example, let’s say that you want to have a blog post hit your blog next Wednesday but there is a YouTube video that you want to embed in the post too. Well, you can use Arkli to upload your video to YouTube BUT it won’t appear on YouTube until the time and date specified. It’s automagical.

In the past, bloggers would have to schedule their post in WordPress, setup some Tweets and Facebook status updates in Hootsuite, upload their video to YouTube but make sure it is set to private, set a reminder for the day the blog post is due to make YouTube video public, edit the WordPress post to have the proper YouTube embed code and hope you remember to do it before the post goes live.

Who Would Benefit from Arkli

This tool is going to benefit anyone that uses social media and blogging. Having the ability to preschedule your blogs in the same location that you generate your Tweets and Facebook status updates is a huge time saver.

Here is my short list of who will benefit from this:

Bloggers (when you get asked to review a product/service, being able to setup the entire campaign and share it with your sponsor is a professional way to present yourself)
Social media users (allows you to provide more value, more often with less time and money spent)
Business owners (setup product / service promotions via Arkli)
Affiliate managers (imagine setting up your entire event/product promotion in Arkli and then sharing that with your affiliates so that they can setup their own promotional pieces off of content you’ve already built?!)
Joint venture partners (finally you’ll have one place to create content and share it with a succinct message)

There are so many more uses for Arkli but those are just a few that came to mind…

A Peek Inside

I am pretty convinced that the description above is not going to be enough… you won’t be able to see the full awesomeness of the tool without seeing the inside. So, I’m going to show you how easy it will make your life in the following screenshots. These screens were taken as I was writing and scheduling this blog post and associated media.

Following screenshot shows the social media campaign interface once you’ve added a blog post to it.

The next screenshot shows the Twitter / Facebook additions.

As you can see, it is super simple to create social media updates from your existing content. In fact, I copy and paste from my blog post to create the updates so that I do not lose the integrity of my message. In the Tweet (above screenshot) section, you can see that I have a retweet option as well which means my other social media accounts can get in on the action too. Thus multiplying my reach.

As you build your campaign, your reach figures increase at the bottom of the screen.

This is a great way for you to see just how many people will be reached with your own outreach. This doesn’t take into consideration the number of people you have reading your blog but it does include all numbers from your social media accounts.

The Advanced Functions

Arkli also has some advanced functionality that I am really enjoying.

The first one that I love is the ability to share campaigns. What does that mean? Well, let’s say you are writing a blog post like this one. A review of a product / service or maybe even an interview or perhaps a podcast. Whenever your post is involving other people, you can share the campaign with them ahead of time and if they have an Arkli account (even at the free level!) they can, from your campaign, schedule their own retweets and tweets.

The second thing I am loving is the statistics that I can see and review per campaign. If I am doing a blog post and I want to see the reach, clicks, etc. Arkli will compile that for me. Not only will I be able to see the statistics within the program, I’ll also get an e-mail at the end of the campaign which summarizes how well it did.

What’s Missing

Now, it wouldn’t be a fair review if I didn’t point out a few things that are on my wish list for Arkli. However, Mike has been super receptive to hearing these ideas and has promised to add in the suggestions that will add true value for multiple users.

A calendar of scheduled items — there is the main campaign calendar which shows you the overview of what is going to post when but when you are inside, editing a campaign, there isn’t a way to see this easily. For now though, opening your campaign calendar in a separate tab works for me.
A way to upload photos within the blog editor — right now I am uploading photos via my own blog in a separate tab and then just using the add full image URL function for images. They did have the functionality to upload an image present but it’s disappeared again so I can’t wait for that to come back.
An indexed list of past, present and future campaigns — I’d love a simple list, off the calendar grid, that showed the list of past, present and future campaigns so I could easily click through to edit them. In fact, it’d be awesome if the list showed the campaigns, had an edit button next to it and beside that a stats button for easy access to the stats.

Otherwise, the tool is pretty solid. It allows me to be efficient, save time and money and look like a more organized, stats-backed blogger.

To Close

Arkli is a tool that I am going to be recommending to ALL of our clients immediately. In fact, I don’t want to work on anyone’s social media campaigns unless they are using this tool. It is seriously that awesome.

If you have any questions about Arkli, its functionality or how I use it, please leave them as a comment. I’d be more than happy to answer them!

Oh, now is the time that you run, not walk, over to Arkli’s website and sign up (at least get your free account going so you can play with it!) If you like it, love it or are indifferent, comment that too! Would love to be able to pass more feedback on to Mike and the team at Arkli.

Visit Arkli’s website here.

Follow Mike Potter (guy behind Arkli) here.

* I have used an affiliate link here. If you prefer not to click through my affiliate link, simply Google the tool referenced. Your karma score may go down a wee bit but in the grand scheme of things, we can still be friends. Promise.

Podcast: To Follow or Not to Follow (Ep. 13)

Erin Blaskie — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 16:00:43 +0000

We’re pleased to announce that we will be hosting a weekly podcast via iTunes! Each week, we’ll be bringing you a five-minute or less podcast focused on a variety of topics: social media, Internet marketing, entrepreneurship, general business tips and more.

Episode 13: To Follow or Not to Follow

One of the things I get asked often is, “Out of the people who follow you on Twitter, how do you determine who to follow back?” Prior to a few weeks ago, that answer was, “Everybody.” I had this notion that I would follow everyone who would follow me and then use lists to suss out who I really wanted to listen to versus those that I wanted to tune into sometimes.

Unfortunately, that method turned out to be the incorrect path for me.

This episode explains why my path was incorrect and how you should approach adding people to follow.

Subscribe Via iTunes

Click on the icon to the left and you will be taken to iTunes where you can subscribe and download this episode along with all other episodes. Once added to iTunes, you can add the podcast to an MP3 player or simply listen to it from your iTunes account.

Subscribe via iTunes now.

Listen from Our Website

You can also listen to the podcast right from this post! To listen, simply click play on the player below. You will not be able to stop and come back to the recording so keep that in mind before starting the podcast. If you have any comments that stem from the podcast, please leave them as a comment here!

Podcast: Growing Your Social Media Following (Ep. 10)

Erin Blaskie — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 15:00:14 +0000

Episode 10: Growing Your Social Media Following

I received a question on my Formspring.me account which asked, “What do you recommend people do to grow their Facebook and Twitter following?”

Growing your Twitter and Facebook following can feel like a daunting task. You start with a profile and an empty list of friends / fans and followers and you might feel as though you’re Twittering and Facebooking to dead air at first. Growing your following is not something that you can purchase or learn about in an e-book so let me save you a few dollars and talk about some natural ways to go about doing this.

This episode focuses on answering that question.

Subscribe Via iTunes

Subscribe via iTunes now.

Listen from Our Website

Twitter for Business Part 5: Twitter Tools

Erin Blaskie — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:00:21 +0000

A lot of our clients ask us about Twitter, getting started on Twitter and how to best use it. Well, we’re answering all of your questions in a no cost video series! (In case you missed video #1, you can watch it here, video #2 is here, video #3 is here and video #4 is here!)

The fifth video is below which covers:

Threadsy.com
Tweet Deck
TwitPic.com
Hootsuite
Mobile apps for Tweeting
The Twit Cleaner
and more!

(If you have any trouble with the embedded video, click here to watch it directly on YouTube.)

Twitter for Business Part 4: Automating Your Tweeting

Erin Blaskie — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:00:50 +0000

The fourth video is below which covers:

Automating your Tweeting
Using Hootsuite to pre-schedule Tweets
A blog plugin to send posts to Twitter and Facebook
YouTube’s Autoshare

There is no cost to watch the video series – simply opt-in here to be notified as soon as the fifth video hits the blog!

(If you have any trouble with the embedded video, click here to watch it directly on YouTube.)

Twitter for Business Part 3: Finding People to Follow

Erin Blaskie — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:00:03 +0000

The third video is below which covers:

How to find people to follow
How to organize people onto lists
How to use Twitter directories
And more…

There is no cost to watch the video series – simply opt-in here to be notified as soon as the fourth and fifth videos hit the blog!

(If you have any trouble with the embedded video, click here to watch it directly on YouTube.)

Sharing Twitter @ Replies – Value vs. Noise

Erin Blaskie — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 02:05:47 +0000

I started the following conversation on Twitter today:

It sparked some great discussion on Twitter about why some people use this method and why it is valuable for some. It also sparked conversation around why it was indeed a noisy method used on Twitter. I felt it appropriate to do a blog post to illustrate more clearly what I was referring to and also to continue the conversation to see what you think about the method I am referring to.

Let’s first dissect the various types of sharing / conversational Tweets as they relate to @ replies.

First, there is the basic @ reply done right. This is when someone sends YOU a message and you reply back to THEM. It’s a one-on-one conversation that will still happen publicly but by placing the @ reply at the beginning, the only people who see it are you, the person it went to and anyone following both of you. Otherwise, it will not show up in the public feed.

The next type of @ reply is the one where you want to share the value of what the person said with your Twitter followers and add your own commentary of sorts. This should be used in moderation as it does add a lot of noise to your Twitter account. This is most often done as a re-tweet with the commentary at the beginning. This is done whether the Tweet was directed at them via an @ reply or just something they saw in their Twitter stream.

The reason that this type of @ reply is good is because it contains a complete thought plus the Twitterers own thoughts. There is no guesswork involved, there is no chasing the conversation thread back and people reading the Tweet ‘get it’ quickly.

Where we start to move into the pet peeve Tweets is when we see Tweets in our Home stream that clearly do not need to be there. These Tweets consist of conversations that provide no real value to other people, conversations that will be too difficult for someone to grasp quickly and confusing conversation. It’s sort of like being at a party and being pulled into a group of people having a conversation. You have to scramble to catch up or stand there and scratch your head.

I’m going to illustrate a few examples of these types of Tweets from my Home feed right now. I am not posting these to illustrate that how these particular Tweeters are Tweeting is wrong but rather point out the types of Tweets that I feel have value and the types of Tweets that I feel create noise instead. The beauty of social media is that everyone is going to use it differently and have preferences as to how they receive information.

This particular Tweet (above) was sent by ‘blogomomma’ to Lori specifically. Instead of doing a re-tweet and response at the beginning, a less noisy approach would have been to simply reply to that person with: @blogomomma – Um … Me hehe!! That would have sent the Tweet to just ‘blogomomma’ and anyone following the two of them versus sending it to everyone who follows Lori.

This Tweet (above) is an example of a re-tweet without context. This Tweet went out to everyone who follows Scott but without knowing the conversation, you don’t know what is hilarious. In order to find out, you’d have to trace the conversation back. A less noisy way would have been to either @ reply directly to the person or re-tweet it with context and commentary.

This Tweet (above) is another example of a conversation that is public but a bit hard to follow. To reduce noise, Sue could have put the @ reply first and sent it only to Sukie and anyone who follows the two of them.

Why This Conversation is Important

I like to know how other people use Twitter and how it’s working for them. I also like to share how I use Twitter in case it is helpful for others. Sometimes, we don’t even realize there is another way to do something so once we see it illustrated, it sparks conversation around the use of a tool.

So, I encourage you to leave a comment answering this question:

What do you feel is value vs. noise when it comes to @ replies and 1-on-1 conversations?

Entrepreneurial Moms Ottawa Event Recap #EMOttawa

Erin Blaskie — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 02:40:09 +0000

I just got back from speaking at my very last event before baby arrives and it was for the Entrepreneurial Moms group here in Ottawa. The event was focused on social media and it was the second time I’ve been to speak for this group.

I promised everyone at the event that I would post up the resources I mentioned and shared as well as the slide decks from the first and second events so this post is serving that purpose. I also figured it might be helpful for some of you out there who are jumping into social media.

Slide Deck from Part One

Entrepreneurial Moms – Ottawa Chapter Launch – Building Business with Social Media

View more presentations from Erin Blaskie.

Slide Deck from Part Two

Social Media: I'm On It, Now What?

View more presentations from Erin Blaskie.

Resources Mentioned in the Slide Deck from Part Two

Twitter for Business: Free Video Series

Erin Blaskie — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:15:34 +0000

A lot of our clients ask us about Twitter, getting started on Twitter and how to best use it. Well, we’re answering all of your questions in a no cost video series! The first video is below which covers:

Setting up your account
Naming conventions for Twitter
How to setup your profile
Customizing your design

There is no cost to watch the video series – simply opt-in here to be notified as soon as the second, third, fourth and fifth videos hit the blog!

(If you have any trouble with the embedded video, click here to watch it directly on YouTube.)