Make Your Tweets Tastier Than Plankton

What really matters?

Does a retweet really matter?

Ellen's Oscar tweet crashed Twitter. Their programmers hadn't anticipated 1,000,000+ retweets. And so their counter hit a boundary condition with no exception handler. Yea, that's geek-speak for crash...

Seth Godin likens this marketing game of chasing retweets to whales eating plankton. They swallow millions, but never savour the flavour of any single one of them. Each is meaningless. But on a grand scale, there is nutrition to be had.

Have marketers become such whales?

Those of us small to mid-sized marketers can't compete directly in this retweeting game. But we can change the game.

Be Helpful

Make your tweets meaningful. Add value. Point out a lesson learned. A helpful tip. Try to make a difference - even a small difference - in the lives of your readers.

That's how you can lift your tweets above the noise and into the signal. Yea, that's more geek-speak for what I just said in the preceding paragraph.

You might not get any traction right away. But keep at it. Keep adding little bits of value to the world, and eventually it will be a better place.

Almost everything you do will be meaningless. But it is very important that you do it...

By Kevin Rokosh

P.S. I was retweet number 2,407 in Ellen's flood. But is that meaningful in any way??? Maybe it was important that I retweeted... Who cares? Ellen, do you care??? Oh yes, it was a Samsung phone in her hand...