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8 words and phrases to avoid in your tweets

How do you get your tweets read and acted upon? There is so much content on Twitter, our brains will skim over tweets which include elements we don’t like.

It may be that the words or phrases have an association with sales pitching, or that they register with you as boring or annoying.

These tweets are probably the result of someone’s laziness or lack of thoughtfulness when posting them. So what eight actions do YOU need to avoid?

Social media courses#Word #WordyWord #ILikeWords
Don’t hashtag every word in your tweet – it’s distracting and, because of that, your message loses its value. And don’t use a list of more than three hashtags at the end of your tweet because it looks like you’re trying too hard.

Social media courses in Derby‘Click here’
It just looks spammy. You need to tell your audience exactly why they want to click on the link. People underestimate the effort it takes to click on a link that takes you away from where you wanted to be – having a leisurely scroll through Twitter.

Status Social social media‘C U L8R’
That’s what your followers will be saying as they click the ‘unfollow’ button after seeing countless tweets written in text-speak. Granted, a 280-character limit makes it easy to resort to shortened words, but don’t be tempted. It won’t take you long to think of a way to rephrase it and there’s no harm in replacing words such as ‘and’ with ‘&’ now and then.

Social media workshops‘Fancy’
When we see a question starting with ‘fancy’ we immediately think, ‘marketing term; they’re trying to sell me something’

“Fancy a job in marketing?”

“Fancy doing a course in cookery?”

We can’t scroll down our timelines for long before we see this phrase. Don’t do it! It’s a cop out! If you’ve ever used this phrase in a tweet, you’ve got to admit you were being lazy, weren’t you? You didn’t really think about how you could have phrased it better.

Instead, think about why your audience might ‘fancy’ whatever it is you’re suggesting. If you think your followers might like a job in marketing, tell them why they would! If you’re advertising a job in marketing then tweet about the aspects of it that you think would appeal to your audience.

Social media courses in Sheffield‘The best’
Who says your product is the best? We’ve seen ten other businesses telling us their product is the best too. We’d like to see some evidence, please. And we mean evidence from your customers.

Social media courses NottinghamREAD MY BLOG HERE
Is it necessary to shout that at your audience? Writing in all caps won’t get their attention. If you want to get people’s attention, be clever about it. You might want to think about your audience and words they might use to show passion and excitement.

Social media training DerbyMisspelled words
You’ve only got a maximum of 280 characters to check! Ok, typos happen (as unforgivable as they are), but there are a few things you can do that will make sure typos are only a ‘once in a blue moon’ occurrence.

A lot of social media management tools have now introduced a ‘confirmation’ feature. For example, on TweetDeck you can add a step before the tweet is sent which prompts you to check your tweet again. On Buffer you can set permissions so your posts are checked and approved by someone else before they are posted. And of course there is our favourite, Grammarly.

Social media training Nottingham‘Don’t miss out’
Your audience will respond differently to this type of tweet. It will have the desired effect on some and they will feel a sense of urgency to purchase the product or service. However, others will decide the value of the offer for themselves.

The key element of all social media is understanding your audience. If you consider them before yourself you are much more likely to get success. And that probably means avoiding the 8 things above!

If you’d like your tweets to not only sing, but to achieve your objectives, then find out more about our Twitter training.

Why You Shouldn’t Use Automated LinkedIn Messages

And this is why we HATE automated messages.

How on Earth do we respond to this one sent to our social media consultant, Mark Saxby?

“I have had a deep look”…?

So deep, they’ve not realised Mark owns a social media agency.

So deep, they’ve got our name wrong (our name is just ‘Status Social’)

And they “love our brand”!

Oh dear.

It’s so rare we see an automated LinkedIn message that could actually be genuine.

We are big believers that it’s better to concentrate on quality rather than quantity when it comes to connecting on LinkedIn.

Save the automation to Elon Musk…

If you’d like some expert advice from true social media specialists then get in touch!

Mark Saxby is a social media consultant at Status Social and has generated countless leads for Status Social through LinkedIn through his posts and engagement. He has trained thousands of delegates how to achieve their business objectives through strategic social media use.

Should I Turn On LinkedIn Creator Mode?

Choosing LinkedIn’s Creator mode for your profile may damage your business prospects.

There’s no doubt it may look exciting – and with LinkedIn developing it ahead of normal profiles, it will be tempting many.

But our experiment has shown that it may affect your effectiveness on LinkedIn.

If you don’t know what LinkedIn Creator mode is, then go to your LinkedIn profile, scroll down to Resources and you’ll see a button to turn it on or off.

LinkedIn Creator Mode turn on and off

Ultimately it was designed for those who published a lot of posts and, in LinkedIn’s words, would like to “grow their reach and influence on LinkedIn.”

Whether Creator mode does that is another matter…

But what is for sure is that LinkedIn is very proud of this feature. It says its research has found people prefer to see Creators’ posts than everyday users’ and as a result, you’re more likely to see their posts in your feed.

(Although we know that great content will still get lots of views whether posted by a LinkedIn Creator or not.)

With LinkedIn Creator mode you can also get access to LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn Newsletter (if you reach certain criteria) which is great if you actually use them. Which most Creators don’t.

LinkedIn has made it even more enticing for people to switch to Creator mode. Creators get more analytics than the average LinkedIn Joe.

Now they can see how many people have seen or engaged with their content over a set time period (ie they don’t need to add up the analytics from individual posts):

LinkedIn Creator Mode content performance

I am a little suspicious of their accuracy seeing that it records I got -1 engagements on May 23. (I can’t be very good on LinkedIn if my engagements go into the negatives!)

LinkedIn Creator Mode engagement analytics

LinkedIn Creators can also see the job titles of those who’ve engaged with their posts plus their locations, industries, seniority, company sizes and companies they work for.

LinkedIn Creator Mode engagement demographics - Job titles

Don’t get too excited at the Companies feature, you only get to see five. And you probably could have seen most (if not all) of those by looking through the engagements on your post.

LinkedIn Creator Mode engagement demographics - Companies

I love a good statistic (after all, the tagline of Status Social is ‘Social Media with Results’ but so far for me the pros of Creator Mode are still outweighed by the negative elements. So when I ask myself should I turn on LinkedIn Creator mode, the answer is a definite ‘No’.

What people often don’t realise when they switch on Creator mode is how it changes their profile. Here’s an example of the lovely Adam Nichols (I don’t actually know him but he looks like a nice fella). Notice his blue button.

LinkedIn Creator Mode example

On a normal LinkedIn profile, that button would be a Connect button. And that is the most powerful button on LinkedIn.

The Connect button allows you to start a relationship on LinkedIn. Of course, that depends on what sort of connection message you’ve written and whether they accept, but a relationship developed over LinkedIn helps that person get to know you, increases the possibility of them seeing your posts and the chances of buying from you. If you’ve never experienced that feeling when someone spends tens of thousands of pounds with you thanks to LinkedIn then you need this.

Now Creator Adam’s Connect button has disappeared, the biggest call-to-action button is Follow. In other words, by clicking this button, you are saying you’d like to see Adam’s posts in your newsfeed. That’s not guaranteed, of course. The LinkedIn algorithm will still decide whether you’ll see his posts or not. Just because you’re a Creator, it doesn’t mean you can post average material and expect it to be seen.

The two other options on Adam’s profile are Message (which you can only do if you’re already connected or have a LinkedIn paid for subscription) so that leaves the More button. Hidden in there is the actual Connect button – BUT HARDLY ANY OF ADAM’S POTENTIAL CONNECTIONS HAVE REALISED THAT.

So what happens is that Adam gets lots of lovely followers but the number of people asking to connect to him goes down.

We did an experiment in the Status Social team. My personal assistant, India Ward switched Creator mode on a few months ago. When she checked her last 100 followers, she found eight people had followed but not asked to connect to her. Bearing in mind that India initiated all but five of those connections during that time, more people decided to follow her than ask to connect.

LinkedIn Creator Mode followers

On the other hand, with my Creator mode turned off, when I checked my last 100 LinkedIn followers, only one person was not connected to me – and he wasn’t in my target audience anyway. And most of my last 100 connections asked to connect with me.

I believe that with the Connect button hidden, potential connections either think it’s not possible to connect with you or that you are less open to connect. So, if they are looking to work with you, they are likely to look for someone on LinkedIn who appears more accessible.

Looking at the bigger picture, India has 2937 connections and 3061 followers. So 124 people didn’t connect with her. India doesn’t produce much content so it seems unlikely people would have followed her just for her posts and equally unlikely that they would have considered India to be too high-and-mighty to accept connections.

Now I have 5367 connections and 5418 followers – just 51 people have not connected with me. And I AM a regular poster of valuable content which people engage with. Both India and I accept the vast majority of connection requests from others.

What have you lost out on?

And, of course, we’re only looking at the stats visible on our LinkedIn profile. What about all those people in your target audience who may have looked at your profile and decided they didn’t want to just follow you so they left without leaving their mark at all?

How many of those could have bought from you? Not just now but in the future? All those people you could have sparked up a conversation with upon connecting. All those people who were more likely to have engaged with your content because they got to know you?

And so when you ask yourself the question, should I turn on LinkedIn Creator mode?, weigh up the pros and cons before you dive in and click that button.

If you’d like some expert advice from true social media specialists then get in touch!

Mark Saxby is a social media consultant at Status Social and generates an average of 2-3 leads a week for Status Social through LinkedIn through his posts and engagement. He has trained thousands of delegates how to achieve their business objectives through strategic social media use.

Header photo by Greg Bulla on Unsplash.

How Mindful Social Media Use Can Help Your Mental Health

Connection and community have been two themes that have come to matter so much whilst we’ve been in relative isolation.

As individuals and as businesses, connection is increasingly important and powerful, writes Alice Bell.

No one said it better than writer Damien Barr when he pointed out – on Twitter – “We are not all in the same boat. We are all in the same storm.” We’re all viewing social media from our own perspectives, and right now, a lot of those perspectives feel pretty vulnerable.

Three Reasons Why Your Video Needs Subtitles

And three ways to add them!

Back in the day, subtitles (AKA captions) were something that you only came across in limited circumstances. They were a crucial accessibility feature for deaf people, they were handy if you couldn’t hear the TV over your mum’s hoovering, and they provided a good laugh during Eurovision when you wanted a translation of bizarre Estonian lyrics.

In the age of social media, though, subtitles are far more common, and far more necessary. Here’s why.

1. Social video needs to work without sound

The biggest difference subtitles make is that they stop people immediately scrolling past your video in their social feed. 85% of social video is watched without sound, primarily because it tends to be muted by default when it autoplays.

This problem is exacerbated if your video starts with a person talking, as many videos do. If all the audience sees is a person mouthing wordlessly – often called ‘goldfishing’ in the TV industry – then why should they carry on watching? You need to make it as easy as possible to watch your video, removing any friction. For more tips on how to make your video content work without sound, besides adding captions, have a look at my blog post on the subject.

Photo by insung yoon on Unsplash

2. Subtitles aid comprehension

When captions are present alongside speech, they can help the viewer retain the information they’re hearing. So not only are people more likely to find your video and stick with it, they’re more likely to remember the message you’re trying to get across.

3. Video content needs to be accessible

Subtitles make your video content accessible for people who have difficulty hearing, or who struggle with English. Without them, you are excluding a large section of your potential audience.

By now, hopefully it’s clear that subtitles are an essential part of the video production process. It’s a no-brainer. The next question is, how can you add subtitles to your video content? Here are three ways.

1. Create an SRT closed caption file manually

It’s important to understand the difference between open and closed captions. Open captions are ‘burnt on’ to the video. They cannot be turned on or off; they appear the same for everyone. Closed captions are much more versatile and accessible, because they use a separate file (usually .SRT format) which is attached to the video when it’s published online. This leads to a whole load of benefits. Viewers can turn them off if they prefer, and the font size will be automatically optimised to suit the device they’re watching on.

On most platforms there’s the option to upload multiple SRT files in different languages, which is crucial for content with international appeal. There’s a slightly time-consuming way of creating an SRT file for free. It’s too convoluted to go into here, but it’s all laid out in this blog post. Once you’ve got your SRT file, you can add it when you upload your video. Not all social platforms support closed captions yet, but most do (including Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube).

Photo by Monica Flores on Unsplash

2. Use a captioning service like Rev

Rev.com provides a very simple and cost-effective subtitling service. They can provide you with an SRT file to attach to your video when you publish it, and/or you can download a video with burnt-on subtitles (AKA open captions). The video is transcribed by a human, so it’ll be fairly accurate to start with it, but you’ve got the option to tweak the captions if anything is not quite right.

3. Use an app to create burnt-on subtitles

There are several mobile apps available that will auto-transcribe your video and add captions quickly and easily. This approach is particularly useful if you’re filming content on a phone and need to publish it as quickly as possible. MixCaptions is a great example that’s well worth trying out, but there are tonnes of options out there. Plus, if you’re posting content natively to the likes of Instagram or TikTok, you can easily switch auto captions on. The ‘auto’ bit means they can be a bit hit-and-miss, but this is still a great option if you’re posting timely content that needs uploading as quickly as possible.

As we’ve seen, subtitles are no longer a niche feature banished to Ceefax, but an essential part of any social video strategy. Hopefully this blog has been useful and helps boost your content’s reach, engagement and accessibility. Happy subtitling!

Guest blogger Ben Horrigan has been producing digital content since 2012, primarily for flagship BBC brands like Blue Peter and BBC News. Now he runs Studio 91 Media, a video production agency on a mission: to create content that is good for platforms, good for people and good for the planet. When he’s not behind a camera, he can often be found playing cello at weddings or riding a three-wheeled cargo bike called Babs. Connect to Ben on LinkedIn.

How to Get Your Posts Seen by More People on Instagram

Instagram has confirmed three new feed options are coming:

Home, Following and Favourites – three feeds that could either transform Instagram for your business – or not make the blindest difference!

Image credit: The Verge

Soon, you’ll be able to split your feed into three tabs:

1️⃣ Home

The Home feed will be similar to how you see Instagram today and will include suggested content that Instagram thinks you will like.

2️⃣ Following

This feed will be a chronological list of all the accounts that you follow.

3️⃣ Favourites

And finally, this is where you’ll see content from all those accounts you love and don’t want to miss! It’s likely to be an extension of the Close Friends feature and you’ll be able to choose who gets added to the list (friends, family, favourite businesses/creators etc.).

Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, has said that they’re hoping to launch the full experience “within the first half of this year” but some people already have the new update.

https://twitter.com/mosseri/status/1478767105444966401

For content creators, you will still have to rank highly to be seen in two of the feeds – Home and Favourites.

The Instagram algorithm looks at four key factors when ranking posts. According to Instagram, the most important signals across Feed and Stories, are (roughly in order of importance):

Information about the post. These are signals both about how popular a post is – such as how many people have liked it – and more mundane information about the content itself, like when it was posted, how long it is if it’s a video, and what location, if any, was attached to it.

Information about the person who posted. This helps Instagram get a sense for how interesting the person might be to you, and includes signals like how many times people have interacted with that person in the past few weeks.

Your activity. This helps Instagram understand what you might be interested in and includes signals such as how many posts you’ve liked.

Your history of interacting with someone. This gives Instagram a sense of how interested you are generally in seeing posts from a particular person. An example is whether or not you comment on each other’s posts.

Credit: Adam Mosseri, Instagram

But if your audience chooses to use the Following feed, and you’re familiar with analysing your insights you may find that your engagement goes up if you’re posting when most of your followers are active.

As with all updates, it may take some time (and testing) to work through the new changes.

After some time we would expect to see some research on exactly how many people are using which feed, which would be SUPER useful.

Or perhaps as a business, you need to start thinking how you’re going to get your audience to choose YOUR preferred feed…

If you’d like to achieve your business objectives on Instagram then check out our tailored Instagram training workshops.

How Often Should You Post on LinkedIn?

“You post on LinkedIn a lot!”

Two people have told me that in the last week but do you know… it’s not true.

I actually post about two or three times a week. But when I do, I take the time to construct a post which will work well with the LinkedIn newsfeed algorithm.

I also ensure the post is relevant and will provide value to my followers.

I take great care in the way I write it – both in terms of the words I use, the order of the sentences, and the paragraph spacing.

I consider who I could tag in a way which won’t be seen as spammy.

How Often Should I post on LinkedIn - PA post

I think about which hashtags – if any – will help my post be seen by a wider audience.

I consider whether a photo or video will increase or decrease my chances of success.

I only post on days and at times when I know my audience is most likely to see it, so it has the best chance of success.

How often should I post on LinkedIn - troll post

I respond to every comment that I receive and I study who’s liked/reacted to the post.

Finally, I analyse the results, what worked and didn’t work. And I ensure I learn from my good and not-so-good posts.

And through this technique, more people see my posts than ever before!

If you’d like to be taught how to write dynamic LinkedIn posts that actually get seen by your target audience then get in touch.

Mark Saxby - Social Media Consultant Derby Nottingham

Mark Saxby is a social media consultant at Status Social and generates an average of 2-3 leads a week for Status Social through LinkedIn through his posts and engagement. He has trained thousands of delegates how to achieve their business objectives through strategic social media use.

Social Media Training – 8 Questions to Ask Before You Book

Looking for social media training? How do you choose who to go to when you want to learn how to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest or Instagram for your organisation?

With scores of social media trainers promoting themselves across the web, it can be difficult to know which one to pick.

Here are 8 questions to ask a social media trainer before booking:

What is their knowledge based on? Trainers with real-world experience are the best. Is your social media trainer successfully managing other businesses’ accounts with proven return on investment? And by return, we don’t mean increasing likes or followers. We mean achieving their clients’ business objectives. Don’t trust a trainer whose knowledge is just from a book or blogs.

Can they show their training works? Can the trainers give you case studies, or even better, the phone numbers of delegates who have achieved their business objectives after their social media training? Is your workshop going to show you how to win over your target audience on it? Or will it just focus on the mechanics of the social network? The latter is not enough.

How practical is their training? You don’t want your money or time to be wasted on padding. Spending the first hour talking about the history of social media is not time well-spent. Neither is waffling about social media theory. What you want is insight and examples of how you can put your social media training into practice for your organisation immediately.

Is the training pitched at my level? Whatever level you are, your social media training still needs to be strategic and practical. If you are experienced at using social media, then it’s worth finding out whether the content is right for you too. Ask the social media trainer which of your objectives you will be able to achieve as a result of the course.

Will the training be long enough for me? If you really want to learn how to use LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter effectively for your business, then don’t expect to learn about all three networks during a morning course. Your social media training should last a minimum of around three hours per network to truly have an impact on your business – there is SO much to learn!

Who else will be there? If you want to get the most out of social media training, a workshop just for you would clearly be best. Social media workshops should start by looking at your strategy and then go on to show you how you can achieve it- and that is difficult with lots of other organisations in the room. If you are with people you don’t know then six delegates should be the maximum.

What follow-up will there be? Research shows that 55% of the value of training is in the follow-up. Not the workshop itself. Good course design and research is responsible for 35% of its effectiveness. Will all the delegates be surveyed before the training? Will the trainer personally follow up with the delegates to ensure the training is being acted upon?

Will you be using PowerPoint? You don’t want death by PowerPoint! We know that presentations can be done well but social media training is so much better if it can be personalised to you. An interactive, hands-on workshop where you can go through your accounts and be shown how to win others over will be so much more engaging – and useful.

Ask the above questions and if you don’t get the answers you like then shop around. There are enough social media trainers out there – you just need to ensure you find a good one!

Find out more about our social media training to see if it’s right for you. We run social media training workshops in Derby, Nottingham and beyond!

Mark Saxby is a director of Status Social, one of the UK’s first specialist social media consultancies. Status Social, which is based in Derby in the heart of the UK, has trained more than 6000 workshop and presentation delegates how to use social media with their objectives at the heart of every workshop. 

Read 7 questions to ask your social media manager to avoid being ripped off.

How Facebook Advertising Encouraged a Bumper Summer for a Gardening Product Company

“The website views were unreal!”

Just how do you double your website traffic on your gardening products? By creating a strategic Facebook advertising campaign.