Sorry for the Twitter freak out earlier. Honestly, I’m not personally freaking out, nor am I feeling different, acting different or doing anything different. In fact, today was a great day and so will tomorrow. I’m at my happiest right now. The only thing is that Twitter is kind of run its course. No, I’m not leaving Twitter but lately there are a few things that really get me worked up.
No one knows the entire story. I find myself repeating myself constantly so everyone has context because if I don’t, I get stupid questions about things. Trust me, I’m a nice guy and a patient guy and no your questions aren’t stupid but when on Monday I say, “catching a cold” and then on Tuesday, “staying home not feeling well” and I get people saying, “well should shouldn’t have gotten drunk last night.” What? I said I was sick and I didn’t tweet at all about being drunk or drinking.
Of course, this is all no one’s fault but myself. You can tweet too much. I tweet so much that even those people that love me won’t read every one of my tweets. My own mother will get things confused sometimes because she doesn’t have 15 minutes to read about my day. I don’t blame her so I shouldn’t get all pissed off when someone doesn’t have all of the info while replying to a tweet.
What’s the solution? Well, that’s why I blog. I blog a lot of personal things here because it’s important to tell the entire story. Actually, most of my blogs are inspired by conversations and questions I receive on Twitter. I say something, someone asks a question and before I reply with 10 tweets, I simply write a blog so that everyone can enjoy and appreciate.
Why tweet? Well, the support system is extremely strong. Example. I said I was taking a day off Twitter and I receive 20 replies within 4 minutes asking me what’s up, 15 direct messages with phone numbers, email addresses and people that I’ve never met before saying they support me and want to help or at least listen and of course many more haters speculated and did their thing as well. I have a few thousand people that I can at least turn to for support. It’s extremely powerful for those days when I need to say something.
Then again, how much can I really say? How much can I bleed out onto the web when Twitter is completely open and anyone can read it. There were three tweets this week that were totally taken out of context. They were open and honest and no one replied to them and then I get some DMs and emails from people that took things totally out of context because they didn’t know the entire story and no I didn’t tell them the whole story. Who’s fault is that? Not mine and really it’s Twitter’s limitations that make it a crappy medium for telling the whole story.
I’ve spent years trying to perfect storytelling via Twitter and I scrapped an entire chapter on it in my book because I realized that there is no formula because I’ve tried it all. I’ve tried telling a story in 20 tweets and that fails. I’ve tried being short and giving tiny details and that doesn’t work and I’ve tried being open and honest and it still gets confusing. There’s no system for this, only tips and tricks but it’s still basic marketing knowledge. Twitter can be challenging for new users because, to this day, I still get frustrated with how things are read and interpreted by the 5,000 people that get my updates across a few different mediums.
It’s interesting to admit this but I still don’t have my style on Twitter. I change and evolve constantly. I gain followers and lose some but at the end of the day, there are still about 200 people who will reply to me anytime I have a problem offering their support. That’s pretty cool. Every once in a while I take some time away from Twitter. It clears my head and gives me time to relax without any scrutiny from the masses. Those of you who are my real friends, you know how to reach me. I’m just a phone call away. That’s the important stuff.
One last note that kind of makes me chuckle. I can’t escape from Twitter. There are still a dozen other accounts that I manage for companies so I’ll still be around but I won’t be broadcasting and instead, I’ll be lowering the antenna from time to time is a good thing.
Why I take these breaks isn’t important but I can say that it’s always an interesting back story. What I notice though is upon returning to Twitter, I will tweet less and be more careful with what I say. It’s a way to restart my stream and it’s something everyone should do from time to time. Thanks to those of you who support what I’m doing. You all know who you are. Thank you. to the rest of you who just listen, I don’t know why you do it. I know there are at least 3 thousand of you. I banned about 800 bots and spammers so my follower count is pretty accurate. So what are you doing? What is it that makes you want to follow me? I’ll never know.
As usual, I have an extremely busy weekend ahead of me. There’s way too much going on to list. I wish you all a great weekend and maybe we’ll chat soon.