Skip to main

Why Twitter is Not Your Bae

Posted Under: Jay Today TV
show_jay
Hosted By
Listen to more Jay Today TV:
About Jay Today TV:

Welcome to Jay Today, 3-minute lessons and commentary on business, social media, and digital marketing from New York Times best-selling author and venture capitalist Jay Baer. Join Jay daily for insights on trends, quick tips, observations, and inspiration. Jay Today is the show for you.

How does Jay Today get produced? Here’s exactly how we do it, step-by-step.

twitter
twitter

The problem isn’t that brands are using bae and other youth slang, it’s where they are using it – in social media venues that lack appropriate targeting, explains Jay Baer

Why Twitter is Not Your Bae
Image via BigStockPhoto.com

The real problem with brands saying “bae” and “on fleek” isn’t the slang. It’s the targeting.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about brands using youth culture slang, like “bae” — spelled B-A-E — and “on fleek” — which means on point, as in these Jay Today videos are on fleek — and other jargon like that. There’s even an awesome Twitter account @BrandsSayingBae that chronicles corporations trying to get jiggy wit it on Twitter.
Screenshot_1_24_15,_1_35_PMThere was an interesting article on Digiday about this the other day, and Shankar Gupta from 360i said that when brands use terms like “bae” and “on fleek,” it’s a desperate attempt to connect with their audience and shows that they are failing to connect with their audience.

“When you see a brand aging down its social channels by tossing in ‘bae’ and ‘on fleek,’ it’s a warning sign in most cases that the brand is struggling to connect in a meaningful way with its audience,” — Shankar Gupta, 360i

I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think that is a misplaced comment and misses the bigger point. I personally don’t have a problem with brands using youth culture slang, especially if those brands are targeted to those demographics. The real issue I have is brands using that kind of language on Twitter.

Twitter is the bluntest object in the social toolbox

Here’s what we don’t think about in terms of Twitter very often:
Twitter is such an incredibly blunt object. On Facebook now, with interest targeting, you could say something using the word “bae” in it and target it as an interest to “whatever them kids like these days” or some other type of interest targeting, and that would automatically send that message only to people who might actually know what “bae” is or be able to use the word “bae” in a sentence appropriately.
It’s the same thing on Google+. Instagram doesn’t necessarily have targeting, but because it still skews fundamentally young, it sort of targets itself, and certainly the same thing is true of Snapchat.
But Twitter demographically reaches a broad cross-section of the population, and still has no capabilities to do targeting by age, by demographics, by gender, by interests…unless you buy an advertisement.
In its organic posting capabilities, Twitter is essentially the same thing as saying, “I want to run a magazine ad, but you have to run that ad in all magazines, including Undertaker Today and Field and Stream,” or, “I want to run a television commercial, but it has to run on all television shows, including ‘The Walking Dead’ and C-SPAN.”
Twitter does not allow brands to target what they’re saying in any way, shape, or form, so to me, if your brand wants to try and play cool and say “bae”, do it on Facebook, where you can actually use interest targeting to send that kind of messaging to the appropriate people.

Brand ARE desperate…for better targeting

The issue is not brands getting desperate. The issue is brands using Twitter this way because it doesn’t yet allow you to target effectively. It’s one of the big flaws of Twitter right now, and we simply don’t talk about it enough.

Sprout Social Shoutout

ConvinceConvert-Media-VERTICALToday’s Sprout Social Shoutout is for is for my company, Convince & Convert. After a six year gestation period, we actually launched our very first Twitter account for Convince & Convert. The handle is @Convince.
I’ve had that handle for so long, literally six years, that many people thought we had to buy it, when actually I squatted on it a long, long, long time ago. So @Convince is where we’re going to share all kinds of stuff on Twitter that we’re doing that we think is interesting. So I would love a follow from you @Convince on Twitter if you get a chance.

About Jay Today

This video is f01-sprout-social-logo-MAINrom Jay Today is my near-daily 3-minute video where I talk about social media, content marketing, business and life. JayToday is available on Youtube, iTunes (as a video podcast, and now as an audio podcast too), and at JayToday.tv. candidio_logo@2x The show is sponsored by Sprout Social (which I use for my social media), and Candidio (a great video editing service).

More Jay Today Videos From This Week:

Join the Social Pros LinkedIn Community

Join a community of real social pros doing social media on LinkedIn. Receive all the inspiration and ideas straight to your feed and add your thoughts to the conversation.

Follow Social Pros on LinkedIn

Subscribe to Social Pros Podcast

b2b influencer