Cross Promotion on Twitter and YouTube

I'm mainly pointing to a blog post by web video journalist Robb Montgomery that should be of interest to any independent journalist or writer: How I used Twitter to get 9,000 views on YouTube. (He's @robbmontgomery on Twitter.) The headline gives you a good encapsulation of the topic, but what it fails to get across the detail in which he goes into how he actually drove traffic, building credibility in a specific search term (or trending hashtag) on Twitter so people would come to see him as a "credible source" and not a spammer. It may be that this step is more important when trying to tie into a topic on Twitter on the upsurge of popularity but of limited lifetime, like the tag referring to Obama's speech in Cairo. I suspect it may be different if you're posting regularly using an ongoing hashtag.

Because of his preparatory work and some lucky timing of comments by some people who could give him a boost, he got 8,901 views on YouTube in one day.

6 Lessons From Using Twitter

I've been experimenting with Twitter over the last six months (@ErikSherman) and have learned a few things:

1. Every form of social media has its own way of working. Don't assume that what you've seen work on one will necessarily work on another.


2. If you can figure out the rules for a given type of social medium (and many who pontificate over what works and what doesn't don't actually know, so far as I can tell), it might work for you. But what you want may have to come indirectly. For example, endlessly tooting your own promotional message on Twitter (or anywhere else, come to think of it) quickly gets tiring for the audience.


3. Generally, what works involves providing things of interest to an audience and some of your personality, within reason.


4. You don't have to live on Twitter to use it. Smart judicious use is much better than a torrent of mistakes.


5. If you're going to post links, do so using bit.ly or some other URL shortening service that will let you track clickthroughs. You want to try seeing what works and what doesn't.


6. Clickthroughs can be low - really low. As in 1 or 2 percent of the people
   seeing a message. However, they can at times be much higher. I recently got over 900 clickthroughs to one of my articles in a single day. That is far beyond anything I had seen before, and I don't have a huge number of people following me. I attribute it to a topic that interested many, a headline that had some life to it ("Stop the Facebook Valuation Madness!"), and adding appropriate hashtags.

If you're active and say things that people find interesting, you'll get more followers. In the last six months, I've gained 525 followers without following the "official rules." For example, I follow only a fraction back (and say so in my profile) and don't thank everyone for following when they do. Yet I think my approach of following what interests me and trying to post things that will interest others is working, because that way the messages are essentially about them, not me. And I want to develop an approach that could work should things continue to scale.

Seven Tips on Using Twitter Hash Tags

I'm no expert in Twitter, but I've learned a few things in the last few months, and one thing is the importance of learning how to work with hash tags. When you see something like #topic, someone is flagging the post for people who might be interested in "topic." Hash tags can become a powerful way to use Twitter, whether you're looking to promote your work, find sources, or even just get a sense of what people are discussing. So here are some pointers that you might find helpful:

• If you're promoting something you've written via Twitter, be sure to add all the relevant hash tags you can think that might apply (and that fit within the 140 characters). That will get the post in front of potentially thousands of people who might be interested.


• Don't assume that all hash tags will work. You want to search on a hash tag before you use it, to be sure that it's in general use. On the Twitter site, point your browser to search.twitter.com and type in the hash tag (remembering the # in front) and see what comes up. If nothing does, you know it doesn't make sense to waste the characters on that one. If you're using a software app like TweetDeck, then take the appropriate steps to search on the hash tag.


• When you've found a hash tag that gets attention, start going through the posts, not only to be sure that you're directing your message appropriately, but to see what other hash tags people use in their messages. This will generally suggest other tags that you might consider yourself.


• If the topics you cover vary, then keep a spreadsheet or word processing document with potential tags to use. If you're working in few enough predictable areas, group them together, so you have the hash tags for a parenting story or the ones for your pieces on scuba diving.


• Check out hashtags.org. You can look at trends in hash tag use, see who is using them, and even find a directory of hash tags. The trend info is not only useful for marketing, but for looking at the state of the virtual zeitgeist, which then becomes fodder for topics you might pitch or for evidence to an editor that something is cooking and that an article on the topic might be just the thing to assign.


• Confused about exactly what a tag is supposed to mean? You can use Tagalus or Hashtag Reference might help. They let you search to see if there's a definition that's been assigned to the tag and, if there isn't one, you can create one.


• Be smart about how you incorporate hash tags. If you're using the term in your post, include the hash there instead of repeating the term and wasting characters. For example, you could write "read a good #book" instead of "read a good book #book".

Using Twitter for Non-Hype Reasons

If you're a working writer and not already using Twitter, you should really consider trying it - not for the ooooh-I'm-gonna-get-famous reaction that many seem to have, but for some solid reasons:

• You can have useful conversations with peers. I just tried the weekly Twitter gathering called #editorchat and found it interesting, and noticed that Wall Street Journal senior technology editor Julia Angwin will be a guest host this coming week, 4/22, from 8:30pm to 10pm eastern. (Learn more about it at the Editorchat blog.) There is also a chat called #journ2journ for journalists and an occasional one called #queryday, during which book agents and editors (one of my favorite book editors, Michele Wells at McGraw-Hill, was active in the last one) will offer tips and answer general questions about what makes pitches and proposals successful. A little investment in time can deliver valuable information not easily garnered any other way. For example, do you know how comparisons between a proposed book and existing titles differ from how new/previous comparisons of scripts and concepts comparisons are used in the movie industry? I do, now.
• Promoting a Twitter presence seems to be much easier than promoting other types of online activity, like a blog, if you're interested in building an audience. For example, I find myself with 345 followers since mid-December -- not a remarkable number, but given that I haven't lifted a finger to gain attention other than putting my Twitter link (@ErikSherman) in a Twitter journalist directory and on my BNET profile, it's also not bad. Consider how long it might take for you to get 345 subscribers to a blog for perspective.
• Twitter does not have to be the time sink that many assume it automatically is. I spend a few minutes a day posting links to stories that I've written and that I think will have some wide interest, pointing to interesting tweets from people I follow, or simply posting some strange thought that comes to me, and occasionally check what others are posting. That isn't a reason to use it so much as an explanation that what may seem a barrier doesn't have to be.
• This becomes an easy way to keep in periodic touch with a number of colleagues and gain some of the interactivity you might have if working in a newsroom and tossing remarks over the walls.
• You can learn of things that otherwise might not have come to your attention. (Here's one that I had retweeted, meaning a link passed on from someone else: the financial reality of being a New York Times top 20 bestselling author.
• This I pass on from having heard it from other journalists, though I haven't used it myself: you can find sources by looking for people with particular backgrounds or in specific situations.
• Depending on who you follow, Twitter can be, as they say in my neck of the woods, wicked amusing. If you avoid the people overly intent on promoting themselves and focuses on those who let some of their personality and humor through, you can get see some great insights and get a few laughs in the process.

It's definitely worth trying, and free to boot. During this week I'll be posting a Twitter tip or two that I've learned -- and if you have any yourself, please email me, and I can put unique ones together into a separate post.