Patent Law

How To Be A Millionaire On #Twitter

By Erik J. Heels

In two easy steps!

• Step 1: Be a millionaire.
• Step 2: Get on Twitter.

Just like advice you'd get at a Dogbert seminar. But it's no crazier than most of the "advice" from so-called "new media gurus" that is flying over Twitter like flies over dung.

Do you want to succeed on Twitter? Here's my advice:

• Ignore all advice from gurus and experts.
• Just do it.

My batting average is .500 on the above advice.

Many of the people dolling out advice about how to succeed on Twitter were either:

1. already successful with social media before getting on Twitter or
2. early adopters who benefited from the first-finest-or-f*cked rule of marketing.

What they should really be advising newcomers is to go back in time and be first. That would at least be honest advice. Twitter is changing so quickly that it's not possible create static rules of engagement that will work for all time. Just use common sense.

But it's not too late to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. I was an early adopter of the Internet (1984), domain names (1992), websites (1997), and blogs (2002). But I waited until 2008 to start with Twitter. That's late (by my standards), but it's still early (in fact).

Twitter is still growing. I went from nothing to 98th percentile in authority in 90 days. So either I'm really good (I don't think so) or it's really easy to gain traction quickly.

Early on, I focused on keeping my follower/following ratio high (usually 10:1) because I thought that this mattered. Also, I was reading 100% of the tweets from my followers, which gets harder the more followers you have.

Well, I've thrown my assumptions out the window, declared that I don't care about my "authority" scores, stopped reading 100% of the tweets from my followers, and just started following people that are interesting.

The results: I added 100 followers in 24 hours. Not that I'm counting or anything.

I had called people with 100+ followers "disingenuous," because it meant that they weren't actually reading tweets from the people they are following. But who says that you have to? With Twitter clients like TweetDeck, you can follow lots and filter what you read.

I will also admit that I changed my thinking after reading a blog post by @MichaelTurk entitled "What Twitter Is To Me," in which he called people with high follower/following ratios "elitist." I'm not sure I agree with that assessment, but there's a lot of good stuff in that blog post.

But Turk's blog post did make me rethink my approach. Rethinking our approach is what separates humans from other animals. If you don't like you're approach to Twitter, change it.

Plus, I didn't want to appear to be a new media douchebag:

Twitter, like all social media platforms, is different things to different people. Some people will want to read only, some post only. Some will want to listen, some shout. Some will want to read lots, some little.

I go back to what my mentor said when I was starting my law firm (which launched the week of 9/11). He said, "Just be yourself, and you'll be fine." I am now living through the second recession in the same job. My mentor's advice applies now more than ever, not only to running a business but also to Twitter.

Just be yourself, and you'll be fine.

Erik J. Heels is not a new media guru. Neither are you. On Twitter he is @ErikJHeels.

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Full post as published by Erik J. Heels on February 25, 2009 (boomark / email).