Legions of bloggers and website publishers logged on November 21 to discover that the familiar digits displaying the number of Twitter shares on their content had disappeared.

Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and all the street numbers had been washed away. For bloggers, that’s not an overly dramatic comparison, as the Twitter share count has been used as talisman of “social proof” since Twitter became de rigueur as a content sharing platform and sites started baking sharing icons into their pages. Now, POOF, it’s gone.

Why Would Twitter Do This?

Why would they unilaterally remove a beloved (and theoretically useful) feature, when other social platforms – including their nemesis, Facebook – continue to provide share counts in their API, and thus in their icons? What’s the upside?

The outward absurdity of this move has been commented upon by many in the social media sphere, perhaps best epitomized by my friend and collaborator Mark Schaefer, who groused incredulously (on Facebook, perhaps ironically):

“This is a really dumb decision on their part because sometimes a business decision cannot be made because of ROI. It has to be made based on RELEVANCE.

Twitter is overlooking the fact that they are going to look stupid when Facebook and LinkedIn have working buttons on every piece of content in the world and they don’t. It is one in a long line of examples where the Silicon Valley stars favor engineering decisions instead of marketing decisions and it is getting really tiresome.”

I understand the frustration. It’s annoying for anyone that runs a blog, including the team here at Convince & Convert. In a blog post they were forced to write after the social media community grabbed pitchforks after the initial announcement was made without explanation, Twitter said they were killing the Twitter share button counts because of a core change to their development framework, and corresponding API schemas. And further, that the share counts aren’t that accurate anyway.

I’m sure this is true.

Kinda.

Twitter is struggling to find a workable business model. Even cursory glances at their stock price, layoffs and boardroom dramas show this to be the case. To date, one of their big ideas seems to be “do whatever Facebook does” and I’ve written extensively on the folly of this “monkey see, monkey do” approach to product development.

This Does Not Feel Like the Very First Time

Twitter’s other business strategy seems to be centered on turning the company into a big data analytics powerhouse with a consumer sentiment overlay. The Nielsen for a new age, if Nielsen were real-time and had unfathomable depths of information about individual’s reactions to topics ranging from terrorism to Kardashians.

Here’s the thing. Having access to unprecedented data has no net present value. You have to convince people to actually pay for that data and/or convince people to pay you to do something for them based on the strength of that data.

And that’s their play here. Twitter wants to own all the data (not just share counts) because once they do, they can compel you to either pay them for the data, or restrict the availability of that data to their own platform.

The death of the Twitter share button counts are reminiscent of the company’s move earlier this year to eliminate all firehose partners except for Gnip, which is now owned by Twitter. Firehose partners have full-scale access to all Twitter data, and historically resold it to developers who baked it into the social media tools you know and love.

Read Steven Willmot’s coverage of that move here, and you’ll start to see this pattern emerging. If they own all the data, every developer and enterprise company that wants full-scale access now has to buy it from Twitter directly.

How This Pays Off for Twitter

I don’t think Twitter can convince bloggers to pay for sharing data directly. But what if Twitter announces – and I’m telling you right now to expect this – that sharing counts are only available on the Twitter Analytics dashboard? In truth, the data available there is already pretty sweet, and if Twitter put sharing data exclusively in that dashboard, what will happen? A LOT MORE people will log on to that dashboard, slavishly scanning the numbers for their daily dose of social proof.

How does that scenario help Twitter? Well, guess what else is featured on the analytics dashboard? If you guessed “Twitter ad options” you win! If you’re reading this article, you are in the top one percent of experienced social media and digital marketing practitioners in the world. Yet, do you really understand Twitter’s ad options? I barely understand it, and I’ve bought a bunch of ads from Twitter, and am messing around in there all the time.

Now imagine Twitter has the ability to educate you and promote those ad options to you every time you log in to see the share count data they stripped away.

Ta-da.

(Here’s the video version of my take on this, also ironically created on Facebook.)

This article originally appeared on Convince & Convert.

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The post Why Twitter Killed the Twitter Share Button appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Today, I want to focus on one specific part of that session: how to pitch influencers. Social media and PR bloggers have been talking about this topic for years, yet I don’t see pitches getting much better. So, I’m going to take ONE MORE crack at this, today.

The 3 Key Ingredients in a Successful Influencer Pitch

When you are sending an email to an “influencer”, it really doesn’t matter what you’re asking them to do (write about your product, attend your event, share your post in social media) the same components of your pitch need to be present.

Explain the Benefits

Remember, you are asking someone to tap into their time to engage in an activity that they weren’t likely to be engaging in otherwise. Make sure it is CRYSTAL clear what’s in it for them. If influencers can’t understand within three paragraphs how this will benefit them in terms of traffic, influence, or cash, you need to rewrite the pitch.

Think of it this way:

Don’t ask how influencers can help your brand, ask how your brand can help influencers.

Provide Specifics

Far too many of the pitches I receive provide a broad outline of what’s possible or what’s expected, but then leave it to me to decide how I want to participate. I think the assumption is that people crafting pitches don’t want to be too specific, because it will seem like they are dictating the terms of engagement, and influencers may not like that. This is mistaken thinking. When you put it in the influencers’ court to think through the next steps and potential interactions, it doesn’t liberate them, it creates more work for them.

Create Deadlines

A sense of urgency matters. Provide influencers with a specific timeframe for participation, and don’t be afraid to provide a small window for making a decision. Remember that based on the benefits outlined per #1 above, most influencers will have a strong sense of whether they want to participate by the time they finish reading your email. You don’t need to (and shouldn’t) give them a week or two to mull it over because it’s likely they’ll forget all about it during that period. And NEVER send an influencer pitch with an open-ended deadline. That’s like lighting money on fire.

How to Pitch Influencers, a Before and After Example

This is a real example of an influencer pitch. The before version was sent by Swell, a division of Billabong that sells beachwear and accessories online, in boutique stores, and through a very successful catalog. We worked with them on social media and content strategy a few years ago. The after version was how I personally rewrote the pitch for Swell:

Influencer Pitch Before

Hi Natalie –
First of…the ladies at Swell wanted to send some love for your style blog…we may or may not use it for inspiration sometimes!

Just to introduce you to who we are:

Swell is a beach lifestyle boutique from Southern California. Although we do carry the larger surf brands, we like to keep the focus on more up-and-coming contemporary brands. We think our fans would really resonate with your style (especially now that you’ve become part of the Volcom community), and would love to work with you on a curated collection, sweepstakes, or maybe just sending over some product from the site. Swell has a large following, so it could be a great opportunity to gain some exposure on both sites.

Anyway, let me know what you think, or if you have any ideas/questions/etc.

Or if you’d rather, we’d love to send you some apparel from the site – just let us know what resonates with your style.

Thanks for your time!
Nicole
Swell.com

Influencer Pitch After

Hi Natalie. I absolutely love your blog, especially the . I’ve got a limited opportunity for style bloggers that I’d like to run past you please.

I’m Nicole, the Community Manager for Swell.com, an online beach lifestyle boutique. We’ve been around for 10 years, and have an email list of more than one million customers. We carry the big brands like Billabong of course, but also up-and-coming brands, too.

Our team at Swell has selected our 9 favorite style bloggers, and of course you made the list. We’d like to send you 3 outfits from our Fall collection. Then after you’ve had a chance to check them out, we’d like to interview you on Skype about which one you like best and why, and then include that video on our Facebook page, where we have 61,000+ fans. It’s a great way to introduce a bunch of new people to .

We’d like to get the clothes out to you tomorrow, and schedule the video interview on .

Can I get your mailing address today please? Also, please let me know if you don’t want to be a part of this program. Thanks! I look forward to working with you.

Nicole
Swell.com
Facebook.com/Swell

Spot the Differences

The revised influencer pitch has specifics, fluffs the influencer’s ego, makes the benefits clear, and provides a concrete deadline and call-to-action (plus, a reverse psychology opt-out).

Now you try! Send me your best pitches at jay@convinceandconvert.com If I like yours, I’ll write another post showcasing your approach.

This article originally appeared on Convince and Convert.

The post The 3 Key Ingredients in a Successful Influencer Pitch appeared first on RELEVANCE.