Many of us have become weary of Twitter for one big and very obvious reason. Of course. It’s about Donald. We’re sick to death of our president’s indulging in inappropriate tweetstorms at all hours of the day and night when he should be working. I have to admit that I’ve become a bit prejudiced when it comes to Twitter. But let’s remain open-minded. I’m a big sports fan, and I listen to KNBR, a local sportstalk station, and I know that the sports guys are all over Twitter. I have to wonder if it has something to do with their only having to come up with 140 characters. Another conversation.

Promote Mode: A new service that’s $99/month

Twitter has rolled out a subscription ad service that charges $99 a month to automatically promote tweets to generate larger followings. If you don’t know about promoting tweets or posts, it’s a method deployed by all of the social media sites to do a one-time boost of a post. The benefit is that you’re not buying into a long-term commitment to a campaign that requires metrics and management. The results are immediate and impressive. This doesn’t replace a long-term, thoughtful marketing strategy, but there are situations where this is a great way to spend your marketing dollar.

Promote Mode gives subscribers up to 10 promoted tweets/day. If you don’t know about social media and promoted posts, this is A LOT. It’s designed for small businesses and brands that don’t want the hassle of managing sophisticated ad campaigns. Their words. And they exactly reflect mine. Sometimes you just want to do this and see the results without analyzing it to death. 

Why are they doing this?

Twitter’s ad sales have been slipping, most recently in the third quarter, when its $503 million in ad revenue represented an 8% decline from the period a year earlier. Twitter does not disclose how many advertisers it has, but it is undoubtedly a fraction of the 6M that advertise on Facebook. Promote Mode could be Twitter’s ticket to attracting the businesses that don’t spend as much as the big brands. This could also completely change the online ad landscape.

According to Wook Chung, Twitter’s director of product management. “”Promote Mode is always-on; it automatically promotes your Tweets and profile, steadily attracting more followers and additional reach for a flat fee.”

But it remains to be seen whether Promote Mode is worth the fee

Boosting 10 tweets a day at that price can prove valuable, as one promoted tweet can easily cost small businesses $30, according to Darius Mohammadi, director of Elite Lucky Gamers Limited, an online shopping business that also helps ad clients with digital and social marketing. It has subscribed to the automated Twitter ad service.

Now for the downside . . .

• The biggest downside may be that Twitter’s automated system decides which tweets to promote. What? How does Twitter know how I’m marketing my business? Even for the very best of us, there are posts that are brilliant and those that are just okay. Let’s not assume that Twitter scrutinizes our posts and conscientiously picks out the brilliant ones for promotion; instead, it is randomized.
• Twitter’s subscription ad product also has limited targeting options. It mostly extends the reach of tweets, showing them to a wider audience and promotes accounts.
• The new program includes analytics so subscribers can track the impact of their promoted tweets.
• Through a mobile-optimized dashboard, Twitter Promote Mode will display how many people saw a subscriber’s tweets or account during the current period, including both the organic reach and the Promoted reach. Subscribers can also track the number of followers they’ve gained, profile visits, and the performance of individual tweets.

Important to note: Promote Mode works best if you have up to 2K followers

According to Twitter’s FAQs about Promote Mode, only those accounts with up to 2,000 followers will see the most value from this subscription at launch. The company plans to offer additional, higher-priced subscription tiers for accounts with larger followings in the future.

No guarantees, but this may represent a good investment

Twitter doesn’t make any guarantees about the gains subscribers will see with the program, saying those will depend on targeting selections, account type and frequency of tweets. However, the company does say in its FAQs that accounts on average will reach 30,000 additional people and add 30 followers each month. That is a significant traction for $100 and may be worth a three-month trial.

Do you need help managing your social media program? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and internet marketing specialists.

A Quick Guide to Going Viral on Linkedin

It’s been more than a year since the mighty Microsoft purchased Linkedin, and there have been many changes, including the interface which now resembles that of Facebook for a reason—it’s this interface that more than 2 billion active monthly users are familiar.

Earlier this year, Digiday reported on how business publishers were seeing growth in referrals from Linkedin.

• August seems to have been a banner month on Linkedin, with more than 50 million shares of new articles during that 31-day period.
• LinkedIn engagement is beginning to rival, or even surpass, their shares on Facebook.
• According to Executive Editor Dan Roth, Linkedin had 3M writers and around 160,000 posts per week at the end of 2016.
• LinkedIn claims that 87% of users trust the platform as a source of information, making it an important destination for attracting attention.

But what sort of messaging works on LinkedIn, and how does it get distributed? 

Unlike Facebook, there isn’t a whole lot of discussion about the influence of LinkedIn’s algorithm on what their users see when they log on. As with most algorithm-based newsfeeds, the reasons stories go viral is divided into two sections.

• Analyze the actual substance, tone and presentation of the stories themselves.
• Consider the distribution particulars of LinkedIn, the role of its algorithm, and the influence that a writer or publisher can have on that process.

An emphasis on the jobs marketplace

LinkedIn is fairly explicit about the types of stories that are likely to go viral. They like articles that share professional expertise, suggesting titles such as these:

• What will your industry look like in 5, 10, or 15 years and how will it get there?’
• What advice do you have for career advancement?

Career advice ranks well on LinkedIn

Career advice and professional development insights are extremely popular—because LinkedIn is a huge marketplace for both recruiters and those looking for jobs. The problem is that for those of us who are in the trenches actually doing our jobs, offering advice for career advancement is simply not a likely topic.

LinkedIn attempts to distinguish itself for its higher quality content

LinkedIn discourages the use of listicles (an article format that is written in the form of a list—popular because it’s easy to scan and digest), and obvious clickbait. Linkedin recommends that writers keep articles appropriate for the LinkedIn audience—avoiding that which is obscene, shocking, hateful, intimidating or otherwise unprofessional. Notice that LinkedIn is rarely mentioned in discussions about the spread of fake news, and It’s not known as a place where viral publishers expect to thrive.

LinkedIn articles avoid being overly promotional

It’s fine to mention your work or the project on which you’re working, but endless self-promotion may result in spam status and a visibility downgrade. To its credit, LinkedIn has carved out a niche; it isn’t trying to compete with Twitter for breaking news or Facebook for mass appeal. Rather, it’s become a powerful platform for thought leadership, where users share content relevant to their careers. Becoming recognized for a particular expertise on LinkedIn is an excellent way to build an audience on this platform. LinkedIn recommends that articles be at least three paragraphs long, and to rank well in search engines, an article really needs to be at least 300 words—besides, you need some substance to make your point.

Distribution: The algorithm at work

Distribution of content on LinkedIn is an algorithmic process, and that algorithm is designed for engaging, interesting stories to go viral. In this sense, the algorithm isn’t all that different from the type of stories that the bigger platforms employ, but aimed at a more niche audience. LinkedIn deploys a man+machine approach to classifying content in real time based on signifiers such as early engagement, previous reaction to content from the page, etc.

LinkedIn has a three-stage process for identifying and dealing with low quality content

• As the post is being created, a classifier bucket posts as “spam,” “low-quality,” or “clear” in real time.
• Next, the system looks at statistical models based on how fast the post is spreading and people are engaging with the post which helps determine low-quality posts.
• Human evaluators review posts flagged by users as suspicious.

Each of us has a LinkedIn community

Stories are shared with a subset of our connections and followers. The bigger our community, the better chance that a large number of people will see our articles. This is determined by connection strength, your connection’s notification settings, and notification state (i.e. number of unread notifications). Members who aren’t in your network can choose to follow you, and by doing so, they will receive your articles and posts in their feed. Followers may receive notifications when you publish an article. Your articles may be available in their LinkedIn homepage feeds and can be included in news digest email.

It is LinkedIn’s editorial mission to provide timely, professional content to its users. Want your articles to reach a wider audience? Provide well-written, quality content that addresses the needs of your community.

Do you need help managing your social media program or maybe just some help generating quality content for LinkedIn? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and internet marketing experts.

Big Changes at Twitter: Character Limit Increases to 280

Twitter is making some changes, which may be in response to its drop in ad revenue. The company tested an expanded, 280-character Tweet limit for users over the last month (I was not one of these users). Apparently they liked the response, because 280-character tweets are now available to all users, unless you happen to be living in Japan, China or Korea.

Longer tweets getting a mixed reception

The longer form of tweets has received a mixed reception, but Twitter has provided data that helps justify the reason for the company’s doubling the Tweet character limit. Twitter says that users are engaging more with the longer tweets. More importantly, longer tweets are generating more likes than shorter ones.

More rationale from Twitter on the character limit change

Historically, 9% of Tweets hit the character limit. This translates to our laboriously trying to edit our posts to make them fit within the limits of the 140-character Tweet. With the expanded character count, the number dropped to only 1% of Tweets running up against the limit.

Interestingly, timelines haven’t filled up with 280-character Tweets—users aren’t necessarily using the limit. Only 5% of Tweets sent were longer than 140 characters and only 2% were more than 190 characters.

Too early to know the results

It’s still a little early to get any definitive data on the results of this change, but I believe that the 140-character Tweet has taught all of us to communicate efficiently on all of our social channels—not just Twitter. While it’s challenging to stay within 140 characters, statistics show that it’s short posts that get read. Those 500-character posts are overwhelming—and no one reads them. Distilling your thoughts down to the heart of your message requires skill. One thing I’m dreading: What will this expanded limit mean to our Tweeter-in-Chief?

Do you need help with your social media program? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and internet marketing specialists.

Russian Facebook Ads: The Result? Increased Transparency

If you’ve tuned out all things political, you’ve missed a growing problem of political advertising on social media. Shouldn’t be a problem, right? Except that Facebook reported on Sept. 6 that it had found an operation likely based in Russia that spent $100,000 on thousands of US ads promoting divisive social and political messages over a two-year-period through May 2016. Zuckerberg has apologized, but probes are in the works by several congressional committees, along with the Department of Justice.

The Russian ads spread divisive views on immigration, race and gay rights

“For the ways my work was used to divide people rather than bring us together, I ask forgiveness and I will work to do better,” Zuckerberg said in the post. Facebook, still the dominant social media network, said 3,000 ads and 470 “inauthentic” accounts and pages spread polarizing views on topics that included immigration, race and gay rights.

This brouhaha is a very big deal because of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, the appointment of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, the ensuing investigation into the matter and the potential charges of obstruction of justice against Trump and members of his team.

As a result of the Russian takeover of the Facebook platform, Facebook now is testing a lengthier review process for ad campaigns that are using highly controversial topics to target an audience. Facebook now will request ad buyers for election-related topics to verify their identity, and they will include disclosures for each ad.

Implementing new changes will slow down the buying process

According to one political advertiser, Facebook is alerting ad buyers, letting them know that their campaigns might take longer than usual to run if its target audience is based on political, religious or social issues. Facebook has become a popular advertising platform because it provides the opportunity to drill down to rich demographic detail, including user interests.

“Ad sets that use targeting terms related to social, religious or political issues may require additional review before your ads start running . . . or you can adjust your detailed targeting elections.”

Tech companies testifying before Congress about Russian operatives’ use of their platforms

The notification comes right before attorneys from Facebook and other tech companies are scheduled to testify before Congress to talk about how Russian operatives might have used their platforms to sway U.S. voters during the 2016 presidential election. It also comes just days after a top lawmaker introduced a bill to require large tech companies to hold a database of political ad spending.

Facebook not alone in its efforts to become more transparent 

As Facebook rolls out new oversight procedures and policies, Twitter is also stepping up its efforts to become more transparent. It will soon begin explaining to users who see political ads why they’re seeing them and who paid for them. An industry that was self-regulating will now fall under government regulation to avoid the kind of takeover of the platform that occurred during the runup to the 2016 election.

Do you need help managing your social media program or maybe just some help generating quality content? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and internet marketing experts.