TWITTER IS THE LAUNCHING PAD

An Interview With Freelance Writer Sarah Cannata

Another great interview here with Australian freelance writer Sarah Cannata about how “TWITTER IS THE LAUNCHING PAD” to rocket your online marketing to the next level.

Follow Sarah On Twitter (@CannataAU)

Follow Keith On Twitter (@KeithKeller)

This podcast is part of a 4 part series I recorded with Sarah recently.

www.Twitter4Writers.com

Sarah: Hey I’m free lance writer Sarah Cannata, and today I’m excited about a brand new project called ‘Twitter Write’. It’s all about teaching writers how to use twitter, and how to get themselves and their writing out there. To help me I’m bringing in the big guns. A big hello! To global Twitter marketing specialist Keith Keller.

Keith: Hey! How are you doing? This is third time lucky, we’ve had some technical challenges here. We are exploring podcasting and if you haven’t had a go at podcasting, it’s a lot of fun, but it’s a bit techy so this is our third attempt at trying to make this thing work. We’ve got a thing called ‘Twitter Write’. How to use Twitter for writers, I’m very-very excited about what we’re doing here you know.

Sarah: Like wise and you know despite the technical difficulties we’re back here talking about it again, so let’s start third time luck with a really basic question that a lot of writers out there and a lot of people in general would be asking, why Twitter?

Keith: Why Twitter? There are eight different choices, all different sorts of things Linkedin, Instagram, Pinterest, You tube and Twitter and Facebook and all these things and there’s eight now, what I call the awesome eight. We’ll talk about all these throughout the course of the series. Why would you use Twitter in that mix? And the thing that we coined in the last phrase, which I really loved in the last podcast, which no one gets to hear because it didn’t work. Twitter is the launching pad, what I used to call, “Twitter is the buzz builder”. Now if you’ve never used Twitter before and you’ve got a product sitting on the shelf, you have just written a book, you have just started a business, just started your own blog and you just don’t know why people aren’t ringing you up, buying your book or you know reading your blog. Twitter just might be the secret sauce; it might just be the secret ingredient that will get the clock ticking. That’ll get the phone ringing, and you found this to be the case isn’t it?

Sarah: I mean exactly, I mean in the past I had used Twitter while in corporate positions, but I have never actually used Twitter to drive my own private profile, and my writing as well. But I mean let’s do a little recap for people here; we started this little experiment a week ago didn’t we? And you took a screen shot of how many followers I had, and at the time I had just 63 followers and today its double isn’t it Keith?

Keith: It’s more than double it’s about a 156 followers, so almost over a hundred followers in a week and I’ll tell you why? There’s a bit of a secret sauce here, a bit of a secret ingredient and I recommended to Sarah that she follows twenty people a day. And most of those, quite a lot of those will follow her back, 153 so 90 new followers in less than one week. Double of what you had, almost 100 more followers, and the secret sauce is to follow people. You know, you’ve just started on Twitter find some cool funky people that are on Twitter and say hello. This is the great thing about Twitter that you can’t really do on the other platforms. You can get really deep and say hello to anyone you want, they don’t have to follow you back, they can block you and ignore you if you’re really annoying, but you can you know short circuit the process, so I recommend that you follow and this is my little recipe which I’m going to put on a T shirt follow 20 people a day for 90 days, we’re seven days in and you’ve already got a 100 new followers that’s pretty magnificent.

Sarah: It’s pretty insane if you ask me, and to be honest with you it’s very easy to do, to make time say, I mean I haven’t spent more than 20 minutes per day on Twitter doing anything and that’s more than just following people because I mean what I do is I like to follow people who I actually do want to connect with and that’s important as well, it’s not really just about having a heap of followers is it Keith?

Keith: Oh no, not at all. Not at all it’s not about the numbers in fact we’re going to talk a lot about, even in this first series and I’m very- very sorry that’s it’s a bit tetchy straight up, but I want to give you a very clear distinction. In Facebook we all know that you have to now pay for what’s now called a boosting, you know if you’ve got a blog post or if you’ve got a book out or if you’ve got an event and you post it on your page nothing happens, nothing, no one gets to see it. Very few people I think 7% of your actual followers get to see it. But for a little fee, 20 bucks maybe, you know Facebook will be very generous [unintelligible 4:52] but the point is that’s their business model now, well you want to get your word out you pay us some money 20 bucks, 50 bucks, so people are paying up to 50 to 100 dollars a day, you know it’s just ludicrous, you’ve even been experimenting with that haven’t you?

Sarah: Yes I definitely have and to be honest with you I haven’t gotten much out of it even though I haven’t been spending ridiculous amounts or anything but $20 here and $50 there it still all adds up and to be honest with you, the amount of reach that I would get for say $20 I mean on the backend it’s telling me thousands, but what am I actually getting out of that and I haven’t had one client come to me after anything that I have put up on Facebook. But the interesting thing is with Twitter I have the capacity to reach millions don’t I, and how does that work because I don’t have many followers, even with double the amount that I started with. I still don’t have thousands and thousands.

Keith: That’s right so if you think about a concept of Facebook boosting there is a very similar concept which has been phrased ‘Tweet Reach’. It’s a very clear idea you have a 153 followers, I have 34000 followers, if I tweet about you to my followers, you’ve just reached 34153 people, ‘Tweet Reach’. Now if someone re tweets my tweet about you all of their followers get it and it goes up the line, and the real trick and the fun, actually the fun is to get heavy hitters which are what I call heavy hitters to re tweet you, to re tweet you in very crucial and important moments. Not every day, “here I’m having an ice cream with my good friend Keith at the beach” no, but you might be speaking, you might be shaking hands with the Queen, you know you might win an award, and those are those times what I call your place in the sun. And on one particular day what I am jokingly call a Keith fest, I’ve got all my mates together in one place and we reached 3 million people.

Sarah: Wow!

Keith: 3 million people for free. You know and all I did was I called in a few favors, I mean I have been doing this a long time, so I said look actually I don’t ask this very often but would you mind if you just tweeted about my gig tomorrow I’m speaking in the city and I’m very excited and I’m just very proud that I’m getting up in front of you know a group of people and I love doing that, and can you tweet for me? And 3 million collectively on the basis that all my mates collectively added up altogether and reached 3 million people. Now that would cost you thousands of dollars on Facebook I’m guessing.

Sarah: It would cost you a hefty amount and I mean most of us are in the same boat, we’re struggling to get out there, I mean hey! Look my work may be great, but there are a lot of great people and I think Twitter is one way that writers and people in general can really just home in, on what they’re doing, and the other thing, because a lot of people have asked me this since I have been telling them about this little Twitter Write project. What do you find to tweet about all the time? And that’s the thing; it’s not just about me is it? It’s not just about my Huffington Post blogs or my blogs on different sites; it’s about sharing things from other people as well isn’t it?

Keith: Yeah, well let’s use the example of the 3 million people. If I tweeted all day “guess what I just did a podcast”, “hello! I’m going to the beach now”, “Hello! I’m doing a gig tomorrow”, people will go so what? But if I get into the habit, which I personally do, I tweet ten to one, for every time that I tweet about myself and you know you can follow me along and check this, for every time that I tweet about myself I find ten other things, ten pieces of what I call Cyber Karma, so if I tweet about my friend Sarah who has just written a book, if I tweet about my friend Marie he’s writing a book in Spanish, if I tweet about my friend who’s got this really cool funky video on you tube that’s just gone viral, I’ve got a friend of mine who has just released a song. There are four people that are in my pocket thinking mate I owe you one, you’ve got one in the bank, you’ve got one in the bank, when you need me just call me in, I call that ‘Cyber Karma’. I mean I do this naturally because I just love sharing, if you follow me ten, 20 times a day I’ve got all this really cool stuff it’s not rubbish, it’s cool just not mine. But when I have my day in the sun, I occasionally do a speaking gig, I occasionally need a favor, I win an award or I you know I haven’t yet met the Queen but that’s not inconceivable, you know shaking hands with the Queen, or we do a selfie at the net ball, if you’ve seen that selfie bomb from last year, then you call in the favors at strategic times, but you don’t do it every day. So every day you are tweeting four to one, maybe ten to one, maybe once a week, once a month you call in those favors and that’s when you get these big numbers like I regularly get a million people I’ve often got two million people and my highest score is three million people.

Sarah: Wow!

Keith: And that’s free marketing for my stuff, my e-book, my podcast, my coaching gigs, my speaking tours, you know my California.com U.S tour which will eventually come off one day. I’m actually thinking about turning that into Mexico 5 O book [Unintelligible 10:15]

Sarah: Wow!

Keith: I’m actually thinking of doing a speaking tour in Mexico next year and so just for fun, and if that comes off then that’s brilliant. And if it does, I’ll just sort of do that and call in some favors from my mates. So Twitter is about building the buzz first, having that cyber cred , we’ll talk about cred in a later series. You just have this enormous, enormous karma, this enormous bank of good will, now this is [Unintelligible 10:47] for people because people are so into what they are doing, it never occurs to them to share for anyone else, they are not in the slightest bit interested in helping others. But if you can get your head around that and most of the people that I know would do it naturally, you can create miracles and we are already creating miracles.

Sarah: Well exactly I mean it really does work the amount of people who followed me and then after you suggested it to me basically I just follow them back and say Hi! And more often than not they come back to me and ask a few questions and it’s all about building relationships isn’t it.

Keith: Yeah that’s exactly right

Sarah: And this is the thing for all of us writers out there to put it into a little bit more context, we’ve all got a blog. The thing is we put so much time and energy, because we do it out of our passion, but if no one is reading that blog, if you don’t have any traffic on that blog what’s it all for? And Twitter is one really easy way that you can reach some pretty high numbers as you quoted just before, and it’s simply just getting on there, making it a habit everyday like you make exercise a habit, like you make other little things a habit. Spending 20 minutes, following 20 people making the time to connect and suddenly your blog posts are going to be seen by thousands, and you know if you hit the right chord millions even. So why wouldn’t you invest that time and energy?

Keith: I absolutely agree and I am so pleased that we’re having this discussion because I’ve got a new book called “Crack The Twitter Code” because I see Twitter a little bit like Pandora if you’ve seen ‘Avatar’ that’s my favorite science fiction movie of all time, you know you arrive on this planet which takes you six years to get to and you can’t breathe the air and the animals are really scary and you need a team of people just to get your head around that, and so Twitter is a little bit like Pandora, it’s another planet, I know that, I know that a lot of people think it’s just absolutely way out. But what I did was I got there early ready for you and I wrote a book, I just decided in 2010 you know what there are eight social media sites I cannot keep up with them all, I’m not the slightest bit interested in what change Facebook made today, or trying to get my head around Google Plus, or trying to make funny videos on You Tube. It’s just not my skill, but I tell you what I am good at, I’m really good at Twitter. And I’m proud to say I’m in the top 1% in the world. Because that’s all I do, that’s all I do, and what we’ve now done here is we’ve created sort of a “Crack The Twitter Code” for writers. We’re actually going to pull it apart and give you examples that were linked to people who write, a blog, or a book, or these things it’s going to be pretty glorious alright.

Sarah: I’m very excited about it and I mean the thing is for everyone out there specially writers, it’s not just about hash tagging, that can’t be your only strategy, that won’t work. I’ve done that in the past so, you know what, have a little faith, and follow us along on these podcasts it will be interesting, I will be asking questions that you’re thinking as well along the way. If you’ve got a question yourself, feel free to email us you’ll find all of our information online “Twitter for writers.com”, you can find us there and Hey I’m happy to ask Keith, I’ll be your voice.

Keith: Yeah I’d really like to and I personally have about ten variations on this idea, I’ve got Twitter for writers, Twitter for Models, Twitter for Actors, Twitter for Speakers, Twitter for Radio Announcers, Twitter for … and the real neat thing I love is you Sarah are a writer.

Sarah: So look from my experience to all the writers out there this is well worth investing your time in. And we are not talking about a lot of time at all, we are talking about 20 minutes a day so follow #twitter write, if you’re interested in following the journey along the way, and I’m sure that you’ll find it incredibly beneficial.

Keith: That’s brilliant well let’s wrap it up that’s the end of the first 15 minutes we’ve just gone a little bit over time and I’ll have to do a little bit of editing to stitch that all together. So keep following this along, Sarah is going to be your advocate, so if you’ve got any questions email or follow Sarah @CannataAU

Sarah now writes articles for The Huffington Post, she’s such an inspiration and she’s my friend, so proud - you watch where she’s going, you watch where she’s going it’s 2015 and in a couple of years time we’re going to be looking back on this podcast and saying I knew her when she was just starting.

Sarah: And I’ll be saying Keith helped me via Twitter.

Keith: [Laughs]

Sarah: Twitter was my launching pad.

Keith: Twitter is the launching pad, that’s the hook isn’t it. Twitter is the launching pad, what a great way to start, what a great way to start.

Sarah: It sure is so thank you all for joining us and we’ll see you next time.