Social media has the potential to be incredibly powerful.
Through platforms like Twitter you really can engage with an audience in real time. You can be truly social and conversational.
Sadly, this isn’t how most companies and individuals use social media.
Most companies send out tweets or publish Facebook posts as a way to promote their own products or services.
They buy a lot of social media ads. They use automated tools to schedule tweets and posts days, weeks or even months in advance.
And they barely engage at all.
In other words, most companies use social media platforms simply as one more broadcast medium. Nothing social about that.
That’s a pity, because social media has so much more to offer.
Introducing the founders of Nifty Portal, a Web 3 media company…
Pio and NFTNick are the hosts of the NFT Alpha Podcast on Twitter Spaces 5 days a week. If you can’t catch it live, you can listen to the recording on Twitter, or on your favorite podcast platform.
While they are the founders and hosts, they also have a large group of regular contributors who share their views each day. Listeners can also raise a hand and be invited to take part. Yep, it’s social.
If you’re into NFTs and crypto, I can recommend you listen in to a few episodes. You might get hooked!
Both hosts are high-energy. They are not only smart about the space, but are also hugely entertaining. They’ll make you laugh.
In short, they are professional content creators within a particular niche.
And if you look at their Twitter accounts, everything there is topical, timely, and social. They do social right.
Now for the social media masterclass…
If you’re in the crypto space at all, or even follow business stories in mainstream media, you’ll have heard about the crash of FTX, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
The story broke early in the week of November 7. As the week progressed, the story got more and more bizarre. Billions of dollars have been lost. The founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, will likely end up in jail. At least, he should. It’s a story of crypto-bros gone mad, and losing billions of other people’s money.
Anyway, last Friday I was listing to the latest episode of the NFT Alpha Podcast, and Pio and Nick were talking about the whole Sam Bankman-Fried disaster.
At one point they said they should totally jump on a plane to the Bahamas – the HQ of FTX – find Sam Bankman-Fried, and interview him for the show.
Typical banter between the hosts.
Except…
A few hours after listening to the show I see a short video clip on Twitter showing them both rushing to the airport in NYC.
Ha! Their banter had turned into a real trip.
They shared some video clips from the airport, on the plane, and then when they arrived in the Bahamas. High drama, lots of fun… and maybe some interviews at the other end.
They spoke to a ton of people, although not Sam Bankman-Fried himself.
And they clearly had a lot of fun, producing some goofy video clips as they ran around searching for people to interview.
Remember, these guys aren’t investigative reporters. They’re content creators. And they totally nailed it on Twitter.
Why this worked so well on Twitter…
First, a peek at the numbers.
In previous weeks, if they shared a video in Twitter, they’d typically get anything from about 6,000 to 12,000 views, depending on the topic.
While in the Bahamas, their videos attracted anywhere between 30,000 and 127,000 views. And each tweet’s Likes, Shares and Replies were through the roof.
How come the huge leap? Because they were doing social media right. They were creating videos that were spontaneous, fresh and original.
Above all, they actually DID something. Instead of sitting at their desks and regurgitating what everyone else what saying, they stepped out into the real world and asked questions.
This is how you do social.
Companies would do well to take notice. Because nobody cares about their boring promotions, and the same-old ads for their latest deals.
Social media has huge potential for engaging an audience.
But not if you’re lazy and can’t be bothered to engage in a way that is in-the-moment and truly engaging.
Dig a little deeper and come up with something that is genuinely social.
And yes, social media done right is always conversational.
