I am excited about Twitter, because it has offerings similar in spirit to the American Dream. But, it is different as well. The American dream is that if you work hard, you can make it here. It doesn’t matter where you are from, what you look like, or even if you speak English well. If you work hard and take risks, anyone can make it in America — and have the house with the two-door garage, a wife, two kids, and a dog named fluffy. Twitter’s offering is a little different.
Twitter’s opportunity is similar to the internet’s opportunity. The beauty of the internet is that sites around the world compete for placement on Google and for traffic. Only one site in a particular niche can be the most popular. Twitter is a little bit similar in nature to this. On Twitter, you can come out of nowhere, and go VIRAL immediately and gain a MILLION followers overnight. It is possible, although not likely. People always dream of going viral, and marketing managers always talk about it. But, the realities are something you need to think about.
It takes SKILL to go viral. Being viral means that you tweet something, someone else retweets your content, and one or more people viewing your tweet on the network who retweeted you — will retweet you again. Being viral could land your tweet in the inboxes of millions of viewers overnight. In real life, it takes years to build up the skill necessary to be popular on Twitter. Most people do not develop that skill even if they are social media professionals — at least not to the level necessary to go viral regularly. Remember, that people who do social media for a living make around $20-80,000 per year. If they knew how to go viral, they could make millions per year and wouldn’t be working for that dumb social media company anymore, right?
I have spoken to staff at multiple social media companies. Nobody was willing to help me write tweets as a separate job description at any of the companies. None were even interested or had tips. So, I had to learn myself. I network with others to do tweet writing by the way. After almost four years of writing tweets, my tweets are finally beginning to be popular. I have written a few that got four retweets. But, what if I can learn to write material so hot that it gets a million retweets?
Twitter is wonderful because it identifies and promotes hot content. If you know how to write content that people love, you can go viral. I am at the level where I can write comments on other people’s twitters and get retweeted 30% of the time. Maybe with a few more years of hard tweeting (hard twork) I can tweet my way to stardom (Twitterdom). Wish me luck! I’m not sure I’ll make it, but at least Twitter affords the opportunity and a chance.
Imagine what my businesses would be like if I had a million followers on Twitter. I would be rich and would have more time to write blog entries! Yay!!! (and a yacht with internet connection)