LifeMathMoney is a massive Twitter account. At 130,000 followers he’s bigger than Colgate, Clorox, General Mills, and many other big brands with their full-time staff of Ivy League marketers. What’s most impressive is that LifeMathMoney reached this size in just 18 months. That’s incredible. And now, his guide: The Art of Twitter unveils all the strategies you need to build and scale a massive social media following.
At 52 pages, The Art of Twitter is concise. However, there is a lot of good information here. The book covers everything: brand positioning, building your following, crafting engaging content, and monetizing your account.
What’s especially nice about this book is how actionable each step is.
If you’re used to conventional Twitter advice, you’ve probably heard things like “Tweet 100 times per day” or “Start fights for attention.”
These strategies rarely work.
Writing 100 pieces of daily content is not very time efficient. And starting constant drama is a great way to blackball yourself.
Like anything, there is a proven path to success.
Where You Start Determines Where You End Up
A lot of social media advice is based around the “personal brand.” If you want to be successful, you have to make yourself into a celebrity. People suggesting this usually cite figures like James Altucher, Tim Ferriss, or the Kardashians. This advice is pretty dated and will not work for 99% of the population.
You’re better off figuring out who your audience is and how to best appeal to them.
The Art of Twitter shows you how to “do your homework” and set up an account which matches your audience’s interests. There’s also a fantastic explanation of how you can use your Twitter bio and picture to increase your follower count. This advice is very helpful and saves you from a lot of trial and error.
From personal expirience, I will say that this system works. The Thirty Days To X Twitter account is set up like a personal brand and took years to hit 10,000 followers. Meanwhile, a newer project reached this milestone in under one year.
How To Gain Followers
As mentioned, most social media strategies are ineffective. Pumping out content, spamming hashtags, follow / follow-back, and similar systems convert poorly.
Likewise, Twitter is a meritocracy. You start out a nobody with zero following, and it’s up to you to build from there. This is incredibly disheartening and getting over the initial hump of 1,000+ followers is a daunting task.
Most people quit before they get there.
Growing your Twitter following by 40% at 10 followers means you’ve added 4 new people. Growing your Twitter following 40% at 10,000 followers means adding 400. One is too small to form a proper basketball team. The other large enough to fill an entire small town.
When it comes to social media strategy, size matters.
The Art of Twitter does a great job explaining how to scale. What you do at zero followers is completely different from what you do once you reach 10,000.
One interesting thing is that (as a beginner) you don’t want to make tons of original, stand-alone content. Instead, you want to focus entirely on engaging with others and adding to already popular Tweets.
Doing so saves you from “Tweeting into the void” and making thousands of posts that nobody ever sees.
This is vastly different from the typical “If you build it they will come” style of advice you see.
Twitter For Passive Income?
Once you’re big enough, certain opportunities present themselves that other people simply can’t access. The ultra wealthy have hedge funds and private equity, while big social media accounts have the power to create “passive brands” which function like traditional niche sites.
These are self-sufficient accounts you can build and deploy for ongoing, fire and forget recurring income.
You can then use your bigger, existing fan base as a springboard. They help spread your new content, drawing in an even bigger audience. This consistently brings in fresh eyes for your automated content, creating a completely self-sustaining source of passive income.
It’s an interesting and creative way to gain hands-off revenue from social media.
Overall, The Art of Twitter is an informative and practical guide to social media success, written by someone who’s built an enormous following in a very small amount of time. Give this one a read if you’re looking to build your own profitable social media accounts.
