Show notes

Episode 136 - Twitter circle.

Melanie

The Monday Morning Marketing Podcast is brought to you byEsther of IPA Group, bringing Premiere online promotion to your business.

 

Esther

And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowersbusiness owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves.

 

Esther

And we're back with another episode of the Monday MorningMarketing Podcast. Today we're talking about Twitter Circle. What is it, whohas it? And why would you want it?

 

Melanie

So, Twitter Circles is a relatively new tool at the time ofrecording. Obviously, you could be hearing this a year from now and then ofcourse, it's up nearly a year.

 

Esther

Probably everybody has it by that point or they've taken itaway.

 

Melanie

But we are some of the chosen special few who have got themat the beginning, but bizarrely, it seems to be only on our private accountsrather than our commercial accounts where we've got virtually no followers.

 

Esther

Yeah, that's what I've noticed. On some of the accounts thatI run, I do have it, but again, they have very low numbers. We're talking up to1000 people that follow them. So whether that has something to do with thetesting and the rollout, because you are only allowed 150 people in yourcircle. So if you were to have let's go for 50,000, 500,000 followers onTwitter, how could you only choose 150 of them? And it has to be people thatyou are following that you can add to your Twitter circle.

 

Melanie

I think they picked me because I could pick everyone and Istill would have space left.

 

Esther

On your personal one. Yeah, well, same with me on mypersonal one. I have far fewer people on it, and I only use it for complainingto companies.

 

Melanie

I use it to geek out on different stuff. I'm a bit of a nerdand I like Star Trek and science fiction stuff, and so I'd rather not do thatas my business.

 

Esther

Well, that's a valid reason. But there are, like I wassaying, a couple of the accounts that I run that are set up as professionalaccounts that do have it, and I could see the value of it for a couple of thembecause one of them that I help run is USABizParty, which is a Twitter chat. SoI do see the benefit of Twitter Circle for it because you can only tweet to alimited number. So say we wanted to announce to just the people who haveinteracted recently with USABizParty, a certain thing, then we would add thoseto the Circle.

 

Melanie

Yeah, but you'd fiddle about with doing that recentlybecause you'd have to go and change those every week, wouldn't you?

 

Esther

Oh, no, because we have regulars. Okay, let's go with theregulars. USABizParty regulars, so those that regularly show up on the chatwould get tweeted too. But Melanie and I were testing this before coming onlive. And it's a bit limited because unless you look at your feed unless yourefresh your feed and avoid refreshing for like 150,000 new tweets, you won'tsee it because you don't get a notification to say that so and so has tweetedto their Twitter circle. At the bottom of the tweet, you'll see, Melanie Boylanhas tweeted to her circle. Limited number of people will see this tweet orsomething like that, but you won't actually know that somebody has tweeted tothe circle unless you are almost online constantly it'll get lost in the feed.

 

Melanie

Well, I think in fairness some of the people that listen tous are online constantly.

 

Esther

Yes, they are. But I do think at the minute it's verylimited. It's not like Twitter communities. So Twitter communities, for thosewho maybe don't have it either, is a dedicated place to connect and share, getcloser in discussions. So it's almost like a second newsfeed for Twittercommunity.

 

Melanie

Well, it is actually a second newsfeed, yes. It's not likeone. It is one.

 

Esther

It definitely is one. Right? And there is a little buttonwhen you're using your mobile or your cell phone at the bottom to take you tothe community and you'll see any new posts and any new tweets there. If you'reon desktop, I think it's over on the left hand side. But the same doesn'thappen with a circle. A circle is just a tweet to less people, but they don'tget notified that you've tweeted.

 

Melanie

The other thing is, by the looks of it, it's unlike onFacebook where you can pick you can actually name and pick different groups ofpeople. I know you can't do that on Instagram, but you definitely can onFacebook. Once you've picked that group, unless you go in and physically changethat group, you will always have to go to the same group each time. So I thinkin some ways for Instagram and for Twitter, it's actually still quite limitingagain, because you don't always want to converse with the same sized groupabout the same thing all the time. And in some ways, don't we go on socialmedia because of the first word?

 

Esther

Yeah, well, we should. We should be social when we're onsocial media. I could see, like I say, for Twitter communities, Twitter chats,I could see the benefit in a way, but you wouldn't want to be running the chatin the circle and only them seeing it because you want to grow the circle.Sorry, you want to grow the chat. So, as a personal account why would we useTwitter circle as a business account of STOMP and IPA Group? What would we usea Twitter circle for? Promotions?

 

Melanie

I was going to go with Cronies, but okay.

 

Esther

It's one of those strange things that somebody invented upand went, let's try this now, and it might turn around and work well,

 

Melanie

I think this will last as long as Twitter stories did.

 

Esther

Possibly. Possibly a lot of time. Like, we love Twitter. Wedo. We do a lot of times, but a lot of times Twitter comes too late to theparty. You know, Twitter stories happen way after Facebook stories, Instagramstories, every other story, and then they removed it. When I quite likestories, I'm sure they'll go on to reels and follow everybody else into reelssoon as well. The Twitter circle and the Twitter community is like FacebookGroups and Facebook being able to post stuff to a smaller group of people onFacebook in your main feed. But it's coming years and years after it and it'sstill not up to the standard that we're now used to.

 

Melanie

I know we're dissing Twitter here, but they are doing anamazing job with Twitter spaces.

 

Esther

Yes.

 

Melanie

And they're now doing the paid for options like TwitterBlue, which I haven't come across yet, I haven't personally yet, but there'sTwitter Shop, which we haven't got over here yet in Europe, but it's availablein the US. There's so many different innovations that they're coming up with. Isometimes wonder if they're perhaps doing too many of these innovation chats.

 

Esther

And not focusing on one and getting it perfect. Yeah, couldbe. Because in the case of Twitter Blue, everybody's asking for an edit buttonon Twitter because we do typos. I mean, that's just normal. But Twitter Bluegives you about 5 seconds before the tweet goes out. So when you press thebutton to tweet, there's a little circle that goes around and you can eitherpress to undo and fix whatever typo you made or you can skip the circle andtweet immediately. So for me, who likes to tweet really quickly, it's reallyannoying because you're like, I have to now press another button or wait for 5seconds. But for those who do have more typos and stuff, then it's a good way ofgetting around that.

 

Melanie

That actually being quite a problem for people who are livetweeting events. And they've got a Twitter Blue account.

 

Esther

Yeah, it is. Maybe they would disconnected for that becauseit is a paid option.

 

Melanie

True. Can you imagine Ben using that option? Seriously?

 

Esther

Ben? No. But Ben never has any typos.

 

Melanie

No, that is true.

 

Esther

This is Ben Moore we're talking about. If you go back to oneof our previous episodes many moons ago at this point, Ben was talking aboutTwitter chats. But, yeah, I mean, yes, we love Twitter. Twitter is coming upwith lots of great things. Sometimes they're a little late to the party,sometimes they just throw things out to a limited number of people and it'llpossibly never surface with the rest of the world. But as Melanie said, we haveit. We are the limited few, we are blessed and we're testing it out for you. Sowhen it comes out for everybody, if it gets rolled out for everybody, thenyou'll know a little bit more about it.

 

Melanie

Okay, guys, well, we've pretty much rated and bashed Twitterup, down, left, right and centre. But we would love to hear your feedback onwhat you think of Twitter Circle, and maybe we might even get one of you backonto the podcast to give us your feedback. There's a thought.

 

Esther

There is a thought. Thanks for joining us today, guys. We'llbe back next week with more Monday Morning Marketing. Until then, bye bye.