When I started to take a serious interest in Twitter, about 4 years ago, I noticed 2 things: people were sending out lots of tweets describing what they were doing, where they were, who they were meeting, how they were feeling, what they were eating, etc.; other people were sending out tweets that contained things they found interesting, typically forwarding articles written by others and motivational/inspirational quotes.
I watched some people tweeting 20 or more times a day, issuing a steady stream of stuff designed to help and/or inform others and ' brand' the sender as a helpful and/or valuable contact. I watched other people tweeting stuff clearly designed to pull at potential clients....little advertising messages.
Some people repeatedly tweeted updates about their work day, who they were meeting with, how they were feeling, what they were eating, etc. And, other people tweeted about their family life, their trials and tribulations, who their children were dating, etc.
Having an interest in social media, I wanted to explore Twitter.
I liked the idea of the concise communication format - a maximum of 140 characters per message. [That, if nothing else, would provide a test of writing skill.]
It seemed to me few people would have interest in my daily activity or my family life...and, regardless, I had no interest in sharing that sort of detail or making Twitter a major activity. I didn't want to provide links to articles...too many other people were doing that. While I enjoy motivational quotes, I didn't want that to be the foundation of my social media activity.
I wanted to do something different.
I wanted to do something meaningful.
I did not want to annoy people with massive amounts of tweets. And I wanted to limit the amount of time I spent on Twitter. I wanted to test Twitter to see what would happen under this social media. I understood I would need to be patient, committing to spend time and effort. I had no expectations of going viral. I just wanted to use Twitter to communicate meaningful things [at least, what I thought would be meaningful].
After thinking it through for a while, I decided to issue a daily Thought Tweet. In the early days they were called Sales Tweets. The Thought Tweets would fit the Twitter limits - no more than 140 characters. And, I would enhance the Thought Tweets by posting 'The Thinking Behind The Tweet'. This meant the tweets could be used by readers two ways: (1) the tweet on its own and (2) the tweet and at least one thought I had in mind at the time I wrote the tweet. The Thought Tweets would be issued 1-per-day, Mondays through Fridays. I committed to creating 1000 of these tweets. That meant I committed to issuing these Thought Tweets for about 4 years.
1000 Thought Tweets, 1 per weekday for about 4 years...that seemed like a reasonable exploration of Twitter, a reasonable social-media test & experiment.
The first Thought Tweet was issued July 19, 2010...here it is, and here's a link to take you back to July 2010.
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By Rick Baker
On July 19, 2010
Sales Tweet #1 if you want to sell then Learn to Listen...that's the #1 message I am receiving today...see my LinkedIn Q&A.
The Thinking Behind the Sales Tweet
LinkedIn is a valuable tool. We can use it to discover what other people think about topics. I asked some of my LinkedIn friends the Question: What does it take to succeed at sales? And, the most repeated piece of advice was - Listen Better.
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Now, almost 4 years later...
The 1000th Thought Tweet will be issued next week, on May 16th.
This 4-year Twitter experiment has yielded some very interesting results. For example, I believe it has improved my writing.
Of most importance, it has created some fine friendships with other Spirited Leaders.