Jen Lehner

I am ready.

Jen Lehner

You know what? If I were going to give you a list of questions that I would hope you would start the interview with, it would have been that one.

I’m glad you asked that question because that is the quintessential question. That’s the question I ran into all the time where people are like, “I just don’t get the point. Why should I even care about Twitter when I can go on Facebook, and I could write an unlimited number of characters? I can put pictures and videos. Facebook makes much more sense. Why would I do Twitter when there are only like 140 characters?”

Jen Lehner

You’ve probably noticed, and you’re probably exercising this yourself; surveys everywhere. We’re surveying our communities. We’re sending surveys to our email lists. We’re asking. We want to know what people are talking about.

Jen Lehner

I was a late adopter to Twitter as well. I didn’t get it. I thought it was ugly. It wasn’t cute. I just did not understand and know how to make money on Twitter.

Jen Lehner

Even if you don’t feel like engaging or if you’re using it more of an automated fashion like you are, the very least we all need to be doing is using Twitter to listen.

Twitter is the richest resource.

Honestly, it’s as relevant to your business as having your electricity turned on and your Wi-Fi.

Jen Lehner

Everybody needs to have Twitter and can make money on Twitter. You don’t have to spend all your time over there, but you just need to have it turned on, and you need to be plugged into it so you can hear what’s going on.

With that, you can make money on Twitter.

Jen Lehner

I’ve got five or six different tactics to make money on Twitter.

Jen Lehner

Just like on all of our social channels, you need to fully optimize your profile so you can make money on Twitter.

Because even though we want people to come to our new $5000 or 10,000 website that is beautiful, has all of our recent shots from our gorgeous photo shoot, and that’s where we want people to come, the truth is, they’re going to Google us. They’re going to end up wherever they end up.

If that first touch point is on your Twitter page, even though you haven’t been there in five years, we all need to make sure our Twitter page looks as good as it can. The thing about Twitter is you have this giant banner, you can pin a tweet, and you can use keywords in your bio. Everybody needs just to start there.

And then, with your activity on Twitter, if you’re using it correctly, what will happen is you can do a few things that drive people back to your Twitter profile. Then, they see everything you’ve got going on.

If you want to promote your podcast or a launch, or a new course, it takes two seconds just to change that banner and have a new pin to tweet. It can be a video tweet up to ten minutes that runs continuously. When they come back to your Twitter page, they’re going to see that. That’s just like low hanging fruit, easy thing to do. Think about it like this.

Jen Lehner

Let me start with advanced search. There’s a search on Twitter that’s beyond just a regular little search bar. You go to twitter.com/search-advanced. If you forget, just type in advanced search in the search bar.

When you get to the advanced search, you’re going to see a bunch of different fields. There’s a field that says “This exact phrase.” If you type in, for example, “I need a graphic designer.” You’re telling Twitter “Go and look for anybody who’s tweeted with that exact phrase.

What’s going to happen is you’re going to see all the latest tweets. Those were tweets that were tweeted within minutes of people typing it, and you’re going to see people who are like, “I need a graphic designer to do the cover art for this album,” “I need a graphic designer to create a brochure.”

Obviously, nobody has time to go in an advanced search and be doing that all day long.

Jen Lehner

What you can do is you can use a tool like If This Then That, which is ifttt.com. It’s free and set-up an applet. They used to call it “recipe.” You set-up an applet and you have to figure out what your phrase is because sometimes you have to get creative.

You say, “Every time someone tweets this exact phrase, send me a text message.” Every time someone tweets that magic phrase, you’re going to get the text message, and you get to be Johnny on the spot, first responder, and you’re going to be the one who gets that client.

That’s a great trick or tip I should say for freelancers.

Jen Lehner

Exactly.

If you have to get creative, you got to play around with it a little bit.

Jen Lehner

Let’s say your target demographic is not specific. We did this with a client of mine recently, and their target demographic are middle-aged women who are looking for something or who might be transitioning to a new career in their lives. Who are those people? How would we identify these people?

We put in the phrase, “I’m going to be an empty nester soon.” Guess what! All the people were tweeting “I’m going to be an empty nester soon,” like their kids are leaving to go to college were exactly the demographic this particular client was looking for. Sometimes, you have to get creative.

Jen Lehner

A lot of times, when we’re trying to confirm an idea whether it’s for our product, a course, a blog post or a podcast episode, or whatever it is, one thing you can do is you could go into search in that same way.

This time, you’ll notice at the very bottom of that search page, there are three tiny little boxes. One says, “positive,” one says “negative,” one says “question.” There might be a fourth and a fifth, but those are the main ones I want to talk about.

If you tick the box that says “question,” then you go in the “To” field and think of someone who is already serving the audience who you’re trying to reach or who’s well-known.

For example, J.J. Virgin is a health and wellness person. She talks a lot about sugar addiction, and she’s a best-selling author.

I went in the “To” field, put “@jjvirgin.” I made sure what her actual Twitter handle was, and then at the very bottom chose the question box.

Jen Lehner

What pops-up is everybody who has asked J.J. Virgin a question on Twitter. JJ Virgin does not have time to answer all these questions coming at her on Twitter. If I’m also an up-and-coming health coach, wellness professional, it’s showing me the questions people are asking.

Now, I know what I need to create to make money on Twitter because I can see what people are asking. More importantly, I can know what they’re asking right now because stuff changes fast, and it’s showing me immediate results. It’s showing me the conversation right now.

Jen Lehner

Now, to the local part of it, there is a place in the search field where you can filter by location.

Let’s say you are a local hardware store. You could do the same thing. You would pick an account like This Old House which is a favorite do-it-yourself show on PBS. You would put “@thisoldhouse” or whatever their Twitter handle is in the “to” field. You would tick the box for questions, and in the local box, in my case, I’m in Ohio, maybe you just put Ohio. If you want your city, you would put Cleveland, and up pops the results.

I had done this right before we jumped on, and there was a tweet asking This Old House for a particular tool. Imagine if the local business replied back with a tweet that said, “We have that tool” or, “We don’t have that tool. That sounds interesting, but come on by. We’ll be here all day. I’d love to help you out.”

Jen Lehner

The point is, you can filter down, and Twitter is the most open platform on earth.

You don’t have to be following anyone, and they don’t need to be following you for you to reap these benefits and make money on Twitter. In fact, you don’t have to have any followers to be doing this stuff.

Jen Lehner

Yeah, and the other bare minimum thing I love to do that your local businesses you’re working with could utilize is Twitter has lists. Do you use Twitter lists at all?

Jen Lehner

That’s pretty much par for the course with most people, but lists can be amazingly strategic.

Jen Lehner

You can use lists in some different ways.

For your local people, for example, they could create a list and use it as a piece of content in and of itself because once you create that list, there is a link. You can share that link on your blog, your website, on your Facebook page or whatever. If the list is good enough, if it’s curated well, it’s amazingly valuable.

A better example would be like for a real estate agent. Let’s say a real estate agent created a list called “best Cleveland resources for new parents.” In that list, they would put pediatricians, baby stores, nanny services, preschools.

Jen Lehner

Then, that list could be an actual piece of content that they could give the link to a prospective person who’s new to the community or moving to the community. You can say “Here’s a list. Here’s the link to the list of things I’ve gone ahead and curated,” or “My favorite local restaurants.”

The other thing is people subscribe to well-curated lists.

The other day, I was looking for New York Times reporters. I found a list that someone else went to the trouble of creating called “New York Times reporters.” And so, I just subscribed to the list, and that list now becomes my list. It’s listed on my list.

Jen Lehner

What happens is the whole point of lists regarding using them for information is I can click just on that list of the New Times reporters, and I could see exactly what they are talking about right now, no other tweets. And I don’t have to follow them to do this. That’s probably the reason why list are most valuable especially when you want to want to make money on Twitter.

To everybody, when you go to Twitter, that’s what makes it seems so useless. Because, you think, “Why am I going to spend all this time creating a tweet that’s going to disappear in seven seconds that may or may not run across someone’s feed?” Lists are the answer to that.

If I just want to see what podcasters are talking about, and I’ve made a list of podcasters, then I can just click in there and see that.

Also, you can make a list public or private. I tell all my businesses, “You need to create a private list of peers or competitors. Whatever you want to call them, but people who are serving the same people who you’re were serving, who were doing the same thing more or less that you’re doing.

Jen Lehner

You need to create a list, make it private because they won’t see that they’ve been added to that list, and when you want to check in with like, “All right. What are they doing?” You could just click right in, and immediately see what they’re talking about and what the conversation is. It’s interesting.

You’ll start coming up with all sorts of cool ways to segment people or companies or businesses or publications into particular lists.

Now, when I watch TV or take in any media, I always have Twitter right beside me because I’m interested in what is the conversation around this movie that I just saw? What do people think of it? What are they saying about it right this very second?

Jen Lehner

There’s one more thing I wanted to say about lists.

Jen Lehner

The other way to use lists strategically is I call it “the tap on the shoulder technique.”

Let’s say you’re a new podcaster and you are trying to round up guests to be on your podcast. You could create a list that’s called “People I’d love to interview, ” and this goes back to optimizing your profile.

When you add someone to a public list, they are notified that you have done so. If Fred Smith gets a notification that says Jen Lehner just added you to the list of people they’d like to interview, then Fred Smith is probably going to click back over to my profile. There, he’s going to see my pinned video tweet that talks about my awesome new podcast, my awesome banner that has the URL in it and anything else that I want to tell about my podcast.

I remember once when I had a new Twitter course. I created a list that said, “Almost perfect Twitter profiles.” It’s provocative. If you get added to a list that says “Almost perfect,” aren’t you curious? Like, “What is she talking about? My Twitter profile is perfect.” Then she’s going to click over and see that I have a Twitter course, and then maybe they click on my sales page.

Jen Lehner

Yes.

Today, it is all about video as we know.

We’re all trying to stand out, differentiate ourselves, and nobody, nothing can convey or portray who you are and what your message is.

One hidden tool inside of Twitter that people don’t utilize enough is Twitter video. I will love it if your listeners take nothing else from this.

You can click a button when you go to tweet, and you’ll see at the bottom, there’s a camera button.

Click on the camera button, flip the camera around to your lovely face, and look right into the little pinhole on your phone, and say, “Hey Fred. It was awesome talking to you today.” Or, “Hey Fred. I enjoyed your talk.” You could do this with the influencers and people who you feel like are beyond your reach, maybe that you want to connect with.

Guess what? When you do that, people read their tweets still. I can’t tell you why. People don’t necessarily read their email, but people still do read their tweets.

If I’ve tweeted someone a video of me talking to them, in my mind, I feel like I’ve had a meeting with them because I got my message to them, and they viewed it. Whether or not they reply is a whole other story.