There’s always that love-hate relationship with social media and so to bring a little clarity to what you guys are doing on social with your travel blogs, I’ve brought on another great guest to chat with us on the TBB podcast.
We’re chatting with Scott Eddy, a personality unto itself on Twitter. He’s someone that’s really made a name for himself from the ground up and with through it he’s started up several digital agencies, done public speaking, 1 on 1 mentoring and become an overall influencer in the travel industry.
The one thing that you’ll find listening to Scott is just how well spoken he is and his ability to throw out great personal quotes left right and center. You’ll know what I mean when you listen to the podcast.
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Summary
I bet a lot of you have heard of Scott Eddy or at least seen some of his activity. For those that haven’t just go over to @mrscotteddy and you’ll see how well he’s done on Twitter.
Bringing him on board for a podcast interview was a no-brainer but what I didn’t expect to hear from him was that his strategies for success around Twitter growth is very similar to the strategy I use. Moreover, it was enlightening to get a glimpse of what he does on a daily basis to get the his level of engagement and follow back.
Threaded throughout the interview is the fact that social media just like everything else is all about the hustle, hard work and sweat equity.
The great thing about Scott is just how openly candid he is about what he does on social media and how anyone else can be as successful as he is with time and effort.
“Social media is a conversation that’s already happening”
The podcast is littered with amazing quotes so just scroll a little further down to find more.
In this particular episode, you will learn
- About Scott
- Story of Scott’s upbringing
- First career as a stockbroker that taught him the most valuable skill of all – how to sell
- Scott’s move to Thailand and vouching never to live stateside again
- Life as an expat – 11 years consistently in Thailand + 4 years in Spain, London for a year and additional stops in the Philippines and Portugal
- What travel means to Scott
- To travel is to learn patience
- What do social media and Bangkok have in common
- Bangkok is considered the most social cities in the entire world – 12.9M in city with 8.6M active on Facebook
- 3 out of the last 4 years, Bangkok was the most Instagrammed place in the world
- Why Scott will never own a digital agency ever again
- Worked with many travel brands
- Some brands get social and some don’t
- Scott’s perspective that every hotel in the world should dedicated salaried positions in digital
- Where does Scott focus his time and energy on
- Travel
- Startups
- Entrepreneurship
- Wine
- Luxury
- Social media
- Don’t have a celebrity status mentality – dive into conversations that are already happening
- A lot of startups have it backwards, Scott would rather build up a following and personal brand before launching a business
- Twitter
- Follow 1000 people a day. 10% may follow back. Unfollow those that don’t follow back.
- Focus on creating a super engaged community so don’t care if people unfollow if Scott tweets too much
- Twitter lists are gold mines
- Scott breaks his list down to the niches he follows and also by countries he’s interested in
- Do not follow online publications, newspapers or celebrities because they will never follow back
- Only platform that has unlimited potential – 79% of accounts on Twitter are open to the public
- Everyone can have 5 million followers in their industry but you have to put in the work
- Thoughts on negative opinions on the follow-back strategy
- Haters gonna hate
- As long as it works for you, why does it matter
- How is it not genuine – You’re following a human being. They decide if they want to follow back. If you don’t produce good content, they won’t follow back. It’s as simple as that.
- Increasing engagement
- No tricks or shot cuts
- There’s a clear correlation of more tweets/photos/videos resulting in more engagement
- Photo tweets bring in much more engagement (30-100% more)
- Retweet strategy
- If someone mentions Scott in a tweet and it doesn’t have a link in it, he will generally retweet it
- Will retweet some of the “big guys” once in awhile
- Communicate with people with smaller followings to help give them a voice
- Retweet 3 people you don’t know every day
- Properly formatting tweets
- Always shorten URL
- Keep hashtags together if possible (1-3 hashtags per tweet)
- Add a photo
- Create the tweet so that’s it’s easy to RT (leave space for comments)
- When retweeting, if the original photo they use sucks, replace it with your own
- Hashtag strategy
- Keep it simple
- Hashtags like #Travel #Pic #Photo #POTD work the best because that’s what people are searching for
- Quotes always do very well for Scott
- Facebook
- Personal profile page is great for engagement with friends and sharing photos
- Fan pages are useless unless you have budget
- Facebook groups are priceless
- 83% of profiles have 2 layers of privacy built in so its impossible to get to know somebody
- Instagram
- Share your photos on Twitter
- Limited of 75,000 for how many people you can follow
- General tips
- Never use less than 5 hashtags
- If you’re sharing to Twitter, write the message with just 2 hashtags. After it’s been shared to Twitter, add the remaining hashtags back in for discoverability.
- Scott’s daily routine
- Wake up at 5AM
- Go for a walk
- Reply to emails, tweets, follow back, unfollow
- 3 hours later, Scott is done most of the work for the day
- Rest of the day is for meetings, monitoring social media, uploading new photos, tweets and engaging
- Has been doing this for the past 3-4 years
- The key for Scott has been to have a system
- Work opportunities through Social
- 100% organic – Scott has not had to reach out for anything
- All of the opportunities have been inbound through social media
- Currently ambassador for ZipKick
Scott Eddy’s quote corner
“If someone talks to me, I talk back”
“Etiquette carries a lot of weight on social media”
“Travel bloggers are serious entrepreneurs …you guys are the ultimate hustlers. If you don’t hustle, you don’t eat. If you don’t hustle, you don’t travel.”
“Chase the conversation not the name”
“For you to sit there and just concentrate on your content and don’t follow people every single day…it’s like getting dressed up and going to a party but when you’re at the party, you don’t talk to anybody. You’re waiting for people to come up to you. It’s not going to happen. You have to take the initiative.”
“Concentrate on your weaknesses and work on those every day”
“I’m human. Just talk to me.”
Links mentioned in this episode
- Scott Eddy’s homepage
- Rocket ship Twitter following growth on Travel Blog Breakthrough
- Tweetdeck
- ManageFlitter – I just tested this out and wow this is amazing for cleaning out your Twitter following. A full review to come!
- ZipKick – Personalized mobile travel planning
Thanks for listening
Thank you for listening to the show! It’s really because of you that I do these so I appreciate all the support.
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All I can say is Wow – Congrats to Scott Eddy!! You’re a Twitter marketing marvel!!
I’m glad you enjoyed the podcast Maria!
I really enjoyed this podcast with Mr Scott Eddy. What an inspirational person. Thanks for the tips and you have a new podcast subscriber Will 🙂
Glad you enjoyed it! There’s definitely a lot that can be taken away from Scott’s experience.
[…] far. You’ll want to check out this blog and listen to his podcast interview with Scott Eddy: Travel Blog Breakthrough. We just recently started following his advice and if you start following people everyday and […]
[…] had first heard about Scott and his amazing life on a podcast we follow by Will Tang from his page Travel Blog Breakthrough. Once we heard Scott talk we were hooked. He seemed approachable, friendly, and happy to meet new […]
Hi Will,
Super tips! Scott engages like mad and follows folks left and right. His star continues to shine AND he’s really doing social media right. Twitter is about engaging. I engage like mad daily, speaking to as many folks as possible, and it sure hasn’t hurt me to get my following to over 30 K….onward to 1 million we all go!
Ryan
It’s insane how Scott is good at social media right? You’ve done a pretty good job too Ryan! Definitely look up to both of you.
Just started listening to travel podcasts and found your series. 2 great listens so far and I have plenty more now to listen to on my daily commute.
Scott’s tips were inspiring so thanks for interviewing him.
Thanks for your kind words Dean! I’ve been lagging behind on new podcasts but hope to have a few new ones up soon!