9 Lessons from My Twitter/X Archive
I've been on Twitter/X since January 2008. Back then, I had no idea how I should use the platform...mostly it was all wrong. Here's what I've learned so far as I've been going back through my archive.
I’m socially awkward. This naturally spills over into social media. I have a difficult time fitting in and finding my tribe, but for some reason, this doesn’t deter me from trying…still.
I try too hard and I think that makes me seem disingenuous. On social media, no one will ask if you’re for real, they will simply scroll on.
If you are trying to win friends and influence people, here is what I learned from my archive:
Compliments are useless. Provide value and insights instead. I spent a lot of time complimenting people because I liked what they had to say and wanted them to like me. This was ineffective.
Your goal is to get people to like, know, and trust you. You do that by providing value, not lip service.
Don’t be overly vulnerable. It begins to look like you’re trying to garner pity even if you aren’t.
Posting about what you’re doing constantly is fruitless and uninteresting to those who aren’t doing the same. No one cares when you do laundry unless there’s a funny story attached. If you’re writing Python code, the only people who are going to relate are Python programmers.
Don’t post too frequently. Make people wonder where you are and what you’re doing sometimes.
Make sure your target audience is clear…both to you and them!
Get people on your email list! This should be one of the main goals of your social media posts.
There’s really not much benefit to location dropping. It’s in your bio…that’s enough. I lived in Las Vegas when I created my account, and no one cared what was happening in Vegas.
Don’t be cringe! They are old posts, sure, you will find some of it cringe. Mine were overly cringe in my opinion. I liked to post songs with explicit lyrics. Looking back, I’m just like…NO!
There was some gold although it was few and far between…here’s a few quotes:
At work again…how does this keep happening!?! 10/22/2008
I’m NOT indecisive. I’m overwhelmingly considerate. 11/19/2008
Dog the Bounty Hunter if like being arrested by the Jerry Springer Show. 1/8/2009
Always a monkey waiting with a wrench. 2/16/2009
I spent a moment this morning looking for socks…that were already on my feet. Yep. 2/17/2009
No effort = no results 3/15/2009
Final Thoughts
I’m going through my archive in an effort to pull from my complete body of work even though most of it is terrible.
I’m going to be putting out a lot of content.
I’m a writer and an artist. It’s time for me to act like I’m both.
I’ve been doing journal pages that go something like this:
I’m going to start publishing those too. They break rule #3 above, so I may add these as a membership to my Ko-Fi page for a small fee for those want the value and inspiration therein. I’ll share that at a later date when there is more worth to share.
I’m doing a page every 1 to 2 days.