First up: unlink your Instagram

Photo by Cameron Clark. — *Photo by* *Cameron Clark*.

A Splendid Note from Liene:

I’ve been fortunate to have worked with wedding pros from 94 countries over my career and I’ve heard from a ton of them this past month – all with similar questions, stories of lost business, uncertainties of what to say to clients who are completely stressed.⁣

We’re all in this together. If you have questions on Coronavirus and your wedding business, feel free to email me at hello@thinksplendid.com.

⁣I’ll be sharing my answers here on the Think Splendid blog so that everyone can benefit.⁣ I’ll also keep your name anonymous. Totally free, no strings attached – I truly do not care if you never hire me.

You can read all the previous Q+As on Coronavirus and your wedding business here or you can sort by Q+A topic category using the links in the sidebar.

Focus on the Splendid

We're an industry that makes our living by celebrating life's milestones, so I'm going to start each of these update posts with a few positive COVID-19 things we can all smile about:

TOTAL GLOBAL RECOVERIES

The number of global recoveries is now more than 692,000 people, up from 651,500 yesterday.

I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying

After noticing that Ken slept with a photo of his late wife every night, one of the carers at Thistleton Lodge presented him with this incredible gift... pic.twitter.com/Q1v8V8HUFS
— The Manc (@TheMancUK) April 20, 2020

A Crash Course On Using Twitter in 2020

I know the Splendid Q+As on coronavirus and your wedding business can be a lot to digest. A lot, a lot.

I think this out of context slide from one of Governor Cuomo’s briefings sums up how a lot of us are feeling about trying to figure out how to steer our businesses through this:

via @nocontextcuomo — *via* *@nocontextcuomo*

Today’s post is lighter fare than we’ve been dealing with recently, but still super practical.

Now that COVID-19 has wedding pros dusting off their Twitter accounts, it’s important to understand how the platform has changed, current best practices, and how to use it without harming your brand.

For all the hate Twitter gets from the wedding industry, it still brings me the highest paying business deals of any social network. Because of this, it is where I focus the majority of my allotted social media time.

It’s also not just relevant for b2b – Gen Z loves Twitter the way Gen X loves Facebook and have become power users. There’s still a lot you can gain from it as a wedding pro, especially when it comes to understanding this new generation of clients (millennials are 40 now, we’ve moved on).

Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen a lot of wedding pros dipping their toes back in the Twitter waters as a way to stay current on what’s going on, and many are making the mistake of trying to use it the way they did back in the early 2010s.

What worked then won’t work now. Here are 11 things to know about using Twitter in 2020:

1) For business owners, executives, and other leaders, the primary purpose of Twitter is mindshare rather than self-promotion.

This isn’t to say there isn’t self-promotion on there, but you can increase the signal to noise ratio by tightly curating who you follow.

You will find that the best CEOs and other leadership executives from companies of all sizes are active on Twitter in a way they aren’t on other social platforms – this is because it’s the best place to actively exchange ideas as well as silently soak it all in by listening.

A good rule of thumb for yourself is to save any self-promotion for maybe one every 10 posts at most. This is NOT the place to make a pitch or ask for the sale in every update.

2) It's important to understand that each platform has a different purpose, different audience, and that each requires a different approach. You should use Twitter differently than you use Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or your blog.

You do not have to share everything, nor should you (studies show over-sharers of personal drama actively build distrust in their brands). Being transparent doesn't mean laying all of your cards face-up on the table. Not allowing strangers access to every part of your life does not make you any less authentic.

That said, it’s okay to be as open as you're comfortable with online.

While I have boundaries that apply across the board for all online platforms (my family members’ stories are their own and anything I share is with specific permission), there are some that are different for Twitter.

Twitter is where I run my mouth, politics and all.

This approach works for me because my target clients are leaders who value informed opinions and who want to know that I have critical thinking skills and not just contrarian-for-the-sake-of-being-contrarian hot takes.

If I don’t get hired because of an opinion I shared, I’m okay with that. My thoughts are definitely going to slip out if we’re working together, so if they’re a dealbreaker for you it’s better for us to know that ahead of time.

Your approach and boundaries to using the app may be different, but you should take some time to figure out what will work best for you.

3) Twitter Lists are a highly underrated feature and can be your BFF when it comes to staying up on the news or in the loop with certain thought leaders.

Twitter lists can be public or private and allow you to follow people without having to add them to your main following feed.

I use my main feed to follow people I want to hear from every time I check in.

I use private lists to sort by topic and check in on them weekly or even less frequently than that.

I have a certain list that I check once or twice a week with thought leaders on a variety of topics (most academics end up on this list because they tweet A LOT).

I also have respective lists for VCs so I can stay up on the investment world, tech leaders, editors and producers, journalists, etc, plus a list of comedy writers for when I just need to laugh – which these days is more than ever.

I’ve also created a public Twitter list of science-focused COVID-19 experts that I’ll be updating on an ongoing basis. You can follow it by hitting “subscribe” on the linked page.

While I may disagree politically with some of the people on this list, they are true experts who have not compromised their credibility by lying to the public about this as some others have.

4) If you are not a news or politics junkie, but want to stay in the loop right now, I’d recommend following specific writers and reporters you trust.

This method also allows you to continue following them when they change media outlets.

Following just the main news sources can cause an overload of updates and if that’s not your thing or you’re not checking in every day, you’re more likely to give up rather than stay attuned to what you need to know in relation to your business.

5) Twitter is an amazing listening tool.

It’s currently en vogue to dismiss Twitter as a useless echo chamber, but if you follow a mix of people with different life experiences and who can also back up their opinions, it’s a streamlined way to hear and think about issues from all angles.

I have learned SO MUCH just by using my lists to follow people who know things I don’t and who have cultural and socioeconomic experiences I never will.

It is a great way to gain exposure to new people and ideas that sharpen you, force you to examine long-held beliefs you may have never questioned, and spark your creativity.

6) If you are a planner, designer, or PR professional whose job requires being a trendsetter or trendspotter, it is impossible to be truly tapped into the Zeitgeist without being active on Twitter – or at the very least actively lurking and using it as a listening tool.

As a marketer – and if you are a business owner, you are a marketer – it’s important to be able to read the room and take the temperature of public sentiment. With Twitter, you’ll know when ideas and initiatives are applauded and when they come across as tone deaf – public consensus you can’t always gauge from Instagram.

An example: the recent video of celebs singing “Imagine” created an immediate, fierce backlash. It was not at all received as the uplifting, encouraging idea it was meant to be. It may have been well-intentioned, but it was misguided and resulted in damaging their brands.

A Splendid Rec: The best marketing and communications pro to follow on Twitter, in my opinion, is Johanna Fuentes, currently Executive Vice President of Comms for Showtime and who was recently named head of Global Communications for Warner Brothers. You can learn a ton just by observing how she synthesizes pop culture information and uses it to create effective marketing and publicity campaigns. Johanna is head and shoulders above everyone else in the game.

7) When you #write like #this in your #Twitter #caption with #hashtags on every #keyword, it does #more than just #look #ugly: it literally tells the reader's brain that you and your brand are exhausting to work with.

This goes for Instagram, too.

Here's why: The visual clutter of the hashtags in your captions slows a person's eye down while reading, causing fatigue. The brain subconsciously associates that fatigue with you and your brand. The potential client may love your work, but for some reason they can't quite pinpoint, they're not entirely comfortable hiring you.

Twitter’s search function is better than Instagram’s, so if you search a keyword, it will pull all instances of that word, hashtagged or not. Use your branded hashtags and write the rest of your tweet normally.

8) If your Instagram or Facebook updates automatically crosspost to Twitter, unlink them immediately.

Linking these posts, either through the apps or through plugins like IFTTT, are ineffective, outdated tactics that actively brand you as out of touch.

The automatic posts show up as links rather than images and force the user to click out to IG, which they’re not going to do.

These links and cut off captions slow your follower’s scroll which, like hashtag abuse, causes them to subconsciously file your brand under the “exhausting” category.

If you want to post a photo to Twitter, upload it directly (you can also use Canva’s templates to make sure your graphics are the right size).

A Splendid Rec: If you want to tune out the COVID news, the new book No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram spills the tea on the details that led to decisions like Twitter no longer supporting linked IG photos (spoiler: hurt feelings drive business decisions, even at giant companies). If you love Silicon Valley gossip the way some love celeb gossip, this deeply reported book will not disappoint.

9) Social media doesn't make a person better or worse, it amplifies who they already are.

While social apps are designed to be addictive, the emotions they bring out of us were already there.

If, while scrolling through your feed, you feel jealous of a friend's kitchen remodel, or insecure about your talents compared to a colleague's, or angry that others are landing the types of clients you're not, those feelings aren't coming out of nowhere.

These feelings of discontentment also aren't a product of the social media scene. I've been speaking for over 20 years at retreats, workshops, and conferences, and the topic of how to cultivate contentment has come up every single time from people in all stages of life.

Feeling like there's more you're missing out on while abundance surrounds you is part of human nature dating back to Eden.

Social media can be a great marketing tool, but it can also be an effective tool for increasing self-awareness and giving us space to improve the unhealthy areas of our character that it brings to light.

10) If you’ve been away for a while, here are some features that are now available to everyone, not just verified accounts:

You can use the block and mute functions to maintain a toxic-free feed. These can be found under “content preferences” in settings.
Twitter will try to force its algorithm on you, but you can switch back to a chronological timeline by clicking the stars emoji at the top of your feed and selecting “Latest Tweets” instead of “Home – Top Tweets.”
Your likes are public and anyone can see them by looking at your profile page.
Your bookmarks are NOT public and this is where you can save things you don’t necessarily want others to see.
You can choose to make your DMs open to anyone, not just those you follow.

11) Brands don’t care about your complaints if you aren’t an active Twitter user, so stop using it to complain.

It used to be that complaining about a company on Twitter got you a quick response. No longer.

Brands know that the algorithm is less likely to show your negative tweets to followers if you rarely use the platform.

Many companies do have open DMs now that are monitored by their customer service team so that people can contact them directly with issues that need to be resolved.

If you think though that an airline or cable company is going to do what you want because you tweeted your dissatisfaction, think again. They don’t care.

Unless you use Twitter often enough to have the tweet surface in the majority of your followers’ feeds, they will ignore you and only leave you more frustrated.

No need to be a Pollyanna, but there’s also no need to actively brand yourself as a complainer. Go through your social media posts from the past month and see how many are complaints. Set a goal to cut that number in half over the next month. It will help both your mindset and your brand positioning.

And, of course, you can follow me on Twitter here.