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 Preface
Twitter is one of the hardest platforms to learn, let alone master. It has the highest
learning curve of all mainstream social media networks.

The company has a hard time retaining new users because of this learning curve.
They’re constantly discovering new ways to educate new users and deliver an
experience that’s easy to use.

Even with all of their efforts, it’s still difficult.

Twitter has nuances that only an experienced user understands.

The most common one being ‘replies’. For example, when a person starts a tweet with
the @username it will not appear to their followers.

Most new users don’t realize this. Someone usually has to tell them. Users that do this
often wonder why nobody is engaging with those tweets, get discouraged and leave the
platform. They’ll say, “Twitter sucks!” No, you just don’t know how to use it.

Many startups and companies don’t know how to use Twitter. I see so many companies
deciding to ignore the platform because they struggle with engagement. Twitter is a full-
time job. Technically, each platform is.

If you want to win at social media, you can’t have one person manage all the platforms.
If you want to squeeze all the juice out of them, you need a dedicated person for each
respective platform - Twitter especially.

So, I wanted to create a book that would take someone from beginner to expert in a
week - catch them up to speed and give direction.

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Being in marketing for close to two decades has afforded me valuable insight that I can
share with the world. By having a deep understanding of marketing I’m able to teach it
simply and in a common sense approach.

Not only is this book packed with Twitter hacks but also reveals the foundation of
marketing and brand building as a whole.

The top notch CEO, small business owner, or entrepreneur can learn complex
marketing ideas and easily apply them to their business.

This book will help you with your new business, startup, or show you how to dig yourself
out of the ditch your business is currently in, whether using Twitter or not.

I dedicate this volume of work to the Hotep Nation team - Uncle Hotep
(@HandyMayhem), Doe (@DoeDoobs), Thomas (@TcatdaGod), Jordan
(@HeywoodJp), Mike (@GreenKing1300), Phoenix (@phoenixfreeband) and everyone
else who helped create an awesome team and brand at @HotepNation.

Follow me now, @VibeHi!

©2018 BooksByBryan.com, Bryan Sharpe. All Rights Reserved.

This publication is for your personal, private use only, and may not be used forany
commercial purpose. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed,
displayed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying,
recording, or other electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and
retrieval systems, without the express and prior written permission of Bryan Sharpe.

The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although
every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor
the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or
damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information
contained in this book. Artwork by kiakili.net

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Contents

Preface 2

My Story 6
How Hotep Became a Thing 12

3 Vital Elements of Branding 22

Care 22
Cause 24
Enemies 25
How to Use Enemies 29

Content Creation 36
Video Content 39
Evergreen Content 43
The Perfect Blog Post 44
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) 49

Timeline Architecture 54
Deleting Tweets 54

The Perfect Tweet 59

Hashtags 65
Threads 67
6 Types of Tweets 69
Best Times to Tweet 72

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The Perfect Profile 80
Header 80
Bio 82
Pinned Tweet 83

Bots & Automation 84

Retweets 90
Quote Tweets 92

Growing Your Following 94

Leaching for Followers 101

Social Aura 103

Guilty/Innocent by Association 105
Trolls 108
Branding 110

Author Background 112

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My Story

Filmmaker, Dwayne Henry was the first person to introduce me to Twitter.

At the time I was having success with Facebook so when he told me about Twitter I was
apprehensive. I even made fun of him for bringing up the idea.

Jokes on me now. Ha!

9 years and close to 50,000 followers later, here I am (@VibeHi), on Twitter and loving
it. Except for the censorship, but that’s another story and maybe another book.

The lesson here is don’t be a late adopter and don’t be closed-minded. When someone
relays some information, investigate thoroughly before passing judgement. You could
miss out on some great opportunities.

For example, I’ve known about Bitcoin since it’s inception and my stubbornness made
me miss out on something great. I would be a millionaire right now had I got in when I
first heard about it. Dumbo!

I want to walk you through the stages of my Twitter development so you can get an idea
of how experimental I was. How I bounced from demographic to demographic and still
found footing.

Had I not change my demographic so much, I’d probably be close to 500,000 followers,
I’m sure.

But nothing is lost when you learn.

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In the beginning, I was using Twitter as a tool to promote my music career as a touring
artist (Rapper, Daddy Bawsten).

Later on, I develop an entertainment blog that covered new music and popular artists.

As an indie artist I understood the struggle to get media attention so I’d feature as many
indie acts as possible, provided their music was tight.

I saw the entertainment blog as a vehicle to get more eyes on my music. I’d use sidebar
ads to feature my new music instead of running ads. If the media won’t feature me, I’ll
just feature myself.

I had success too. 5-digit play counts were normal, if I got the ad display artwork right.

Anyway, I eventually got noticed by a startup incubator and given a media pass to the
launch of an energy drink for Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson.

Being the fearless individual that I am, I made a scene and 50’s team liked me. To make
a long story short, I joined their team as regional marketing director.

That was the end of my music career. Ha! I was getting paid well and preferred the
professional life better. I think it suited my strengths more and I wanted to be viewed as
more than a rapper.

People like to marginalize you really fast.

Obviously, with the 50 Cent affiliation, my Twitter following exploded. I think I gained
10,000 followers just from the affiliation alone.

In my head, that was cool but I wanted people to follow me for me, and not because I
stand next to the man. I want to be the man.

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After two years with the energy drink startup, we parted ways. I had glimpse into what
life was like in the entertainment industry as a popular personality and it was not what I
wanted for myself.

Everyone is SHADY in the industry. As someone who likes to “keep it real”, I just don’t fit
in. I was so disgusted that I changed almost everything about myself.

The worst mistake I made was deleting my blog. So, many pages were indexed on
search engines, valuable content, and original content created by my staff were all
gone.

That could have still been a monetary vehicle for me today but oh well. Lesson learned.

This transformation led to a Twitter hiatus. I believe I left the platform for a 6-month
period where I did some serious soul searching.

Have you ever noticed that people either stay in the entertainment industry or end up
with a spiritual awakening? Well, I was of the spiritually awakened variety.

My transformation led to a change in diet, where I became vegan overnight. Probably a

bad choice at the time as far as the execution was concerned but I did it.

I also became really spiritual. I saw myself investigating all materials dealing with the
soul. I was meditating more than ever and practicing yoga. I even changed the way I
dressed.

A new me was born, so I began my journey back to Twitter.

The new me wasn’t received well as I saw a drop in my engagement. The drop in
engagement was probably due to several things.

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Being inactive for a long period of time. In the time you go inactive, so do your followers.
When to come back you’re pretty much tweeting to no one because many people have
moved onto another social network or just lost interest in Twitter.

Also, my new content was very “new-agey” and not music related at all so there was a
disconnect. I pretty much had to start the branding process from scratch.

This is where the story starts to get interesting and I reveal a bit of my darker side.
Hopefully, you won’t judge me too much.

Since, I was into the spiritual thing, I decided to find the spiritual community online.
Surely, they’d understand me. And they did.

I found a community that seemed like I fit right in. The leader of the community took to
me as well. Mostly, because I boasted a large follower count and wrote knowledgeable
tweets.

But I began to notice dogma led by the leader. Something I loathe. It felt very much like
a cult. It was either his word or you’re a “demon”, as he liked to call people.

I wanted his audience and I knew he didn’t deserve that audience because he was only
manipulating them for his own benefit. What I did was very calculating.

I started to challenge him, in a respectful manner first. Of course, he responded harshly,

as a cult leader should. When you run a cult, it’s very important to make it known that
you are NOT to be challenged.

I didn’t care. I know I could outsmart the guy. All it would take was time.

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First, I removed myself from the group and changed my name to @VibeHi. I knew that
when people saw this they’d start to question.

“Why did he leave?”

“Weren’t they really close?”
“What going to happen now?”

I was probably his top 3 “underling” so to see me leave was shocking. I moved up in
ranks in his organization on purpose before challenging him because I wanted the clout
and recognition of being an expert in the field of spirituality. I wanted people to trust me.

Now that I was on the outside, it was time to expose him for the person he was. So, I’d
time perfectly which tweets to respond to and contradict his word.

He hated this so much he’d make a huge spectacle of it. I’d tweet one thing to him and
that would lead him on a 20-tweet rant. I was now the one in control. He was now
promoting me just as I planned.

The people in the group who were jealous of my high rank in the group previously, rose
in ranks as they came to their leaders’ side and started to attack me.

I now had what it seemed like a whole group attacking me online. Many people would
cringe if this happened to them but I knew this was the perfect situation for my new
beginnings.

These other guys became my targets now too. I’d antagonize them by contradicting one
of their tweets and they’d go on long rants about me too.

I now had this group working in my favor. Anytime I wanted I could provoke them.

My entire motive was to expose these people for who they really were. Frauds!

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When they’d attack me, they’d use vulgar language and make up lies. Pretty much,
these people had no control over their emotions and that is exactly what I wanted to
expose.

How can you claim to be this almighty spiritual person but get angered and bother so
easily?

The public began to take notice and slowly people came to my side. Some were ex-
followers of his with nightmare stories of how he manipulated them and how he would
manipulate women for sexual benefit.

This obviously fueled my desire more. I hate when people try to take advantage of
others. It’s a pet peeve for me.

Eventually, he had a falling out with one of his main leaders. This was a woman with a
large following that defended him the most. Her word was gold in that community. So,
when she fell out with him, the community was shaken.

Of course, her and I were previously at odds because I was an enemy to the group but
now that she was no longer one of them, that concern would be alleviated.

I quickly followed her and like clockwork, she followed back.

It’s not always about how many followers you have but it’s also about how many high
quality followers you have (influencers). She was worth more than gold to me.

On Saturdays, back then, I’d hold live esoteric discussions. I invited her to speak at one
of them and she obliged. It was one of our best talks.

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Her and I became closer and eventually, business partners. She’d help me spearhead
the creation of what we have now in, Hotep Nation.

How Hotep Became a Thing

Following my “spiritual awakening” of course my tweets were not “normal”. Some were
mystical, alternative and occult-like.

Many ideas went over people’s head or were written off as new-age fantasy or anti-
religion. Even my tweets about food and health received backlash.

I realized fast, that the truth and truth tellers will be attacked while the liars are given
awards and celebrated as celebrities.

My attitude was like:

“Nothing can stop you, except you.”
“Every barrier in your life, you put there subconsciously”
“Your reality is the one you create.”

I’m solution-oriented and I like to minimize big problems. If someone shows me a major
problem, I’ll say, “Oh, is that all?”

Obviously, for the person focused on the problem and not the solution, I could become
irritating. Narcissistic victims is what I call them. They want sympathy for attention, not
solutions.

When the Mike Brown police shooting and Trayvon Martin / Zimmerman murder took
place, Twitter transformed. And it hasn’t been the same since.

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Racism became the topic of the day everyday. But as someone who is solution-
oriented, I don’t quite fit the narrative that other African-Americans like to follow.

The narrative is that we’re an oppressed people and we have to dismantle the system of
white supremacy.

I grew up in a 6-figure income household as a child so I cannot relate to being

oppressed. I have cousins who have grown up in poverty. I recently lost two cousins to
murder.

I know the struggle better than most. I don’t see this as oppression though. I see this as
neglect. I see it as those that “have” and those that “have not”.

And just like the rich vs poor dynamic goes, the haves are not helping the have nots, for
various legitimate and illegitimate reasons.

Either way, this problem of racism and white supremacy was not one that I saw difficult
to hurdle. The solution seemed rather simple.

“Focus on yourself.” - @NerdattheCoolTable

Everything in life comes with hurdles. Life is one big hurdle. Jump!

Others choose to play the victim. From this came the plot.

If you sprinkle in the fact that I believe the original Egyptians were Nubian, you’ll see
this misnomer, “Hotep”, from my combatants.

Truthfully, Hotep is about accountability. Whether it’s Hebrew Israelites, Conservative,

Five-Percenter, or Nation of Islam, you’ll see a common trend.

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Independence.

They aren’t asking anybody for ANYTHING.

It is the black liberal faction that has accused me of heresy and for that I’m grateful. As
you can see again, the enemy presents itself.

“The weight of profundity is measured by its opposition.”

Here we have the reverse situation of my interaction with the Twitter cult-leader.

In this position, I am the “cult-leader”.

And I’ve actually been called that. LMAO! That is literally, hilarious! I crack up all the
time at that. It’s a compliment, although inaccurate.

The difference is, I know how to take the heat. With leadership comes attention -
wanted and unwanted attention.

Attention is energy. It cannot be created nor destroyed but it can be transmuted. The
key is, when people come to take a peek, you need to have what they need to see at
that exact moment.

Timing is key to life, period. How relevant are you?

If I can catch someone on a relevant topic, not related to my brand or lifestyle, I can
introduce new thoughts with less resistance.

The hardest part is getting people to actually pay attention. Once, you have their
attention the rest is alchemy.

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I have a way with words. It was a gift I should credit my mother with. She never wanted
me to talk “black”. And for that, I’m thankful.

Talking black can be learned but the Queen’s English makes you distinguished.
European land, European language, European rules.

Today, I’m fluent in Black and White english. LMAO!

In the 80’s we didn’t have iPads. We had books. And my home had a lot of them.
Hundreds. I was always a great reader.

But it wasn’t until I cared, that I realized how powerful I can be with words. The selection
of each word can change the tone and influence people differently. Interpretation should
be deliberate.

Mastering words is an art I must master.

Understanding emotions or social IQ is another strength of mine.

As an only child, I used to antagonize people. I’d push them to their limits until they
snapped. I would probe for their hot button and keep pushing it until they popped.

At 10 I classified people into categories. But there are sub-categories which could
create hybrids.

The difficult part is connecting them with phenotype. I wanted to know someone just by
looking at their face.

I really believe that the face takes on the design of the personality. Complicated, but
maybe I’ll write a volume on it one day.

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Anyway, these categories and sub-categories are based on patience and morality.

How quick are you to snap is how I’d measure patience. And how you reacted when you
snapped is how I measured your morality.

Of course there’s that intersectionality where morality dictates patience, if at all. That’s
where you find some really decent people.

Your POP or reaction is all I need to see to know who you are.

Remember this: you never really know someone until you see them angry.

People have limits. I liked knowing them.

In hindsight, that was pretty sadistic of me as a kid. My only justification was the fact
that I realized at an early age, most people are trash. So it evens out. Ha!

The flip-side to this is, I’m a really patient person with a high moral ground. In a way, I’m
judging people using myself as par. Are you more or less of an asshole than I am?

You can see that I love to experiment with the human psyche so dealing with a bunch of
personalities on Twitter is like an amusement park for me. Twitter has given me access
to a laboratory filled with lab rats.

With energy and lab rats I could easily build an empire. I have everything I need. All I
needed was a team.

Here’s where my heavy conscious and morality kicks in.

This isn’t about me.

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It’s about humanity.

I believe we are all fragments of the same energy. All is one. Everyone just has to play
their role. The gifts given in life are the tools for that role.

It’s better if there is no leader. A cult, with no leader. Do it like the elders used to do.
Create a grand council. I didn’t know it at the time, but this is what Hotep Nation would
become.

Before I proceed, let me clarify this cult term now.

Cult, I believe is short for culture. And I have every intention of affecting the culture of
humanity. Negative connotations come with the term “cult”, and that, I don’t mind at all.
All attention is energy.

I do not agree with the negative connotations that come with the term “cult” but see it
more as a brotherhood. If this were Ancient Greece, we would be akin to the Senate.
You can even look at it like a Fraternity or one of those Real Estate Networking Groups.

I don’t have to be the leader to lead. With my social IQ I know who can and will work
together. There’s one common theme among these people. They have their own hustle.

There’s two types of people. Talkers and Hustlers. Usually, people don’t do much of
both. How can you spot a hustler? They have their own venture currently.

Notice I stated, “currently”. Because there’s has beens or hustlers turned talkers.

The funny thing about all of this was that it was unintentionally intentional. I didn’t try to
create any of this, it just fell together.

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And that’s what people need to understand when it comes to brand building. Things
comes together on their own - you can’t force it.

The elements of your brand come from the journey in creating your brand. Every part of
its culture and language will come from the journey, if you let it.

Sometimes people try to force their brand into the market without understanding the
audience. You can’t sell to anyone you don’t understand. Or worse, they don’t
understand you.

When the people, the fans, the following, the supporters, all chip in on the brand
creation, the brand is loved. The brand is a brand of the people.

I didn’t create the name Hotep. The people called me that. I just ran with it.

The lane was already created. I just put my vehicle in it. If I would have tried to create a
movement from something contrived from nothing, it would take time to get people to
join the conversation. But when the conversation has already been created, you can
steer it.

So, we became Hotep. I added on the Nation. And so Hotep Nation was born.

But let me add a bit a of back story because again, this was all unintentional.

I had a follower that showed me mad love on Twitter. Uncle Hotep (@HandyMayhem).
We really clicked on Twitter because we had mutual respect for each others’
conservatism.

I would consider him my elder and I believe that we should respect the elders. Not
because it sounds cute and righteous. That’s not why AT ALL.

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It goes beyond respect. It’s about TIME. You can read about an event in a book or you
can speak to someone who was actually there. They would be a primary source.

Anyone older than you is a primary source on TIME that expired before you landed on
this planet.

Uncle Hotep, told me this story. He said that in his day, there was this feud between
black liberals and Hoteps. In fact, they used “Hotep” as a pejorative in the past as well.

That was the aha! moment for me. Here I am a so-called “Hotep”, in a dispute with the
black left but it’s not new. This is an old war and I’ve found myself thrust into it because
of my opinions.

This is what compelled me to act.

First of all, taking the word “Hotep”, which is African Culture, and using it as a pejorative
is disrespectful to our history and ancestors. They’re probably rolling over in their
graves.

I don’t care about A LOT of things, but every time the black liberals write another bias
blog post in their smear campaign against “Hoteps”, I feel my patience-bubble about to
pop.

When I feel it in my heart, then I know what I’m doing is right.

That’s all I needed to compel me to start HotepNation.com - to steer the conversation to

a moral place. In 2018, integrity and morality are almost gone in the media.

Blatant pieces of propaganda are now called “think-pieces”.

So, that was my motivation to create this machine we now call Hotep Nation.

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The machine is so awesome that people have created fake Hotep bot accounts. You’re
not official until people create bot accounts to leverage your brand recognition.

You can literally plug right into an audience and benefit from the conversation by
creating an association with the term Hotep.

That’s transmutation. Taking something that could have become ill and providing the
medicine or the antidote. Turning a positive into a negative.

Causation. This is HUGE for building a brand. What is your cause? The cause is
probably the most important thing. You created Product X because what? What is your
Why?

Organically, I discovered my “why?” and it fit with my goals.

Identify your cause and distill it down to the most simplest statement.

You don’t have to be specific. In fact, specificity could backfire. If your cause is too
specific then there will be less people who can relate to the cause. The more narrow the
target, the lower the audience size.

You have to find a sweet spot that includes anyone but not everyone.

Anyone, but not everyone.

If your cause has an enemy, attack (provoke).

Here’s where the cultish games begin.

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I don’t attack...that much. I hold myself back because being in a leadership position
affords me great responsibility. I have to keep my hands clean for the sake of public
relations.

But aside from that, if the King has to attack then the army is weak.

When I tweet dissenters who ridicule Hotep, sometimes my followers jump in and drag
that offenders mentions to hell. If you feed into it, you’ll be on Twitter all day arguing with
a troll.

Trolls are like the army of the internet. You’re only as strong as your trolls. If you have
no trolls, then your brand hasn’t connected with its audience yet.

When people see that an interaction with me can spark an attack by trolls, you can see
how the “cult” leader moniker starts to fit. Ha!

I don’t ask these people to do it. They do it on their own. Why? Because I have become
a voice for things they care about and any anti-voice must be addressed.

Again, I’ve tapped into things people care about. I doubt they care about me. They care
about what I do for their cause.

If I had to sum up three vital elements to building a brand they would be:

" Care
" Cause
" Enemies

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3 Vital Elements of Branding

Care

People only pay attention to things they care about. Brands always seek attention.
“Attention” is a popular industry buzzword. If you ask me I think it’s overused and
abused.

But you can’t get attention if you’re not talking about anything that people care about.

You have to speak to people’s pain!

Don’t sell yourself or your product. Sell yourself as a solution to alleviate your target
audience’s pain.

If you don’t know their pain(s) then you haven’t done enough research and/or
experimentation.

An easy way to find people’s pain is to use Twitter’s polls feature. Often you’ll tweet and
get zero engagement but post a poll and all of a sudden you see engagement.

Why? Because polls are anonymous. For various reason people may not respond via
likes and retweets because this stuff can be seen publicly, if they don’t have a private
account.

People fear being judged for their opinions. A poll gives them an out.

Another way to experiment is to be controversial. Make bold declarations.

For example: “Nobody likes pineapples on their pizza!”

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Of course there are people who like pineapples on their pizza. But the “nobody” part will
trigger someone to respond. From these responses you can gain valuable data on how
people feel regarding various subjects.

Blanket statements trigger the emotions of people. Once their emotions are provoked
you’ll be able to identify pain points.

Identify their pain and use it as a tool.

Another thing you want to be mindful of is patting yourself on the back. Don’t do it! It
makes you look arrogant and will breed envy. Envy is something you want to avoid.

To quote Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power:

“Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to
harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable.
Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.”

Always let others do the bragging for you and respond with humility. This is part of just
being a virtuous human being anyway but it has profound effects on your audience.

In the marketing world we call this social proof. You can also research ‘normative social
influence’ and ‘social validation’.

This can be defined as, a psychological phenomenon where one or more passive
individuals follow or conform to the actions of others within a group.

Basically, monkey see, monkey do. When others see people cosigning you, they are
more likely to engage, follow, and eventually buy.

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When you get compliments, hit that retweet button!
If their pain is your pain, a natural and organic connection will form. If you care about
what they care about, it will be easy to brand yourself or the product.

People know when you’re faking and they WILL call you out! Don’t be a faker. History is
full of revered scumbags. Be one of the last good humans to leave a mark on Earth.

Stop trying to create a conversation and steer a current one in your direction. If you
can’t find a conversation that you can inject your product into then nobody is going to
care about your product. Hit people where they care. It’s all about relevance.

Cause

Your cause is born from your care. The pain that you’re targeting. It’s not something you
make up with partners in a room trying to be creative. That would be disingenuous and
often you’ll miss the mark.

Your cause is to eradicate the problem. Destroy the pain or fear.

Don’t lose sight of your cause. Your cause is your brand. Pin it on your office wall or
write in on your bathroom mirror. Tattoo it if you’re brave.

Your cause is what people rally around. The better you know your cause the more
clearly you can define your mission statement.

Again, the cause is born from the thing(s) that people care about. It’s the thing that
resolves their pain. Identify the pain to find your cause.

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An advantage I have is that my pain is my target audience’s pain. We share the same
pains. I am the target audience.

Too many times people enter an industry they really don’t care about. I believe this puts
them at a serious disadvantage.

On the flip side, if your care is the opposition of your target market you can still launch a
product because you understand your enemy. Your enemy is basically just your
opposite. If you know yourself, then you know your enemy.

For example, I know liberals very well because they are my opposition. I could easily
create a store of t-shirts and market it to them because I know what they care about.

Enemies

No kingdom is great without stories of opposition.

Can you name one great leader, king or protagonist that didn’t have an enemy? Isn’t the
plot of every story of every great leader revolving around an enemy?

With no enemy you have no story.

Branding is storytelling. Without an enemy the story is BORING. Don’t bore people.
Excite them!

If you don’t have any enemies then you stand for nothing.

Enemies become friends. Those are the best friends. Most of my closest friends are
former enemies.

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Enemies are mostly admirers. Antagonize, then turn them. They’ll become your greatest
advocates.

The enemies that stay your enemies keep you relevant. They bring you up in
conversation. They feed your “buzz”. They feed you energy.

An easy target for an enemy is Sea World, although they won’t respond. What they do
to those whales is sinful and they should be shut down.

People will take interest in you just because you hate Sea World. If I were you, I’d
definitely target Sea World as an attention getter and potential enemy.

The truth is, people just need something to relate you to. People have boxes in their
mind and if they can’t fit you into one of them it becomes frustrating so they disregard
you.

Your enemies help define who you are and what you stand for.

It is now popular to be Anti-Trump. So popular that every brand and individual has used
him as a catapult and platform to elevate themselves by propping him up as an enemy.

Dichotomies are natural. It is the law of duality. Yin and Yang.

Often your antithesis will mold your thesis.

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The Alt-Right Story

The Alt-Right is a so-called white supremacist group but more accurately put, a white
nationalist online community. As a black man, they should be my enemy inherently.

I don’t view them as an enemy at all, but the public thinks they are and the public’s
perception is what’s “real”.

What I did was quite interesting and tactful. I created a fake alliance. I gave the illusion
that we sat down at the proverbial table and created an alliance.

The truth is, there was never a discussion of an alliance. I never had alliance talks with
Richard Spencer or any other leader in that community. In fact, when asked about the
alliance in an interview I simply replied, “I don’t even know what the Alt-Right is.”

So what happened?

I created a hypothetical situation in a blog post that currently has close to 70,000 views,
174 comments, was featured on the infamous r/theDonald on Reddit and my email
inbox was flooded with interview requests - some I accepted but most I declined.

Our site received numerous link backs to the blog post which provides SEO value.

“The unexpected creates shock value”

I took advantage of that shock value. Remember, marketing is all about attention.

I knew the Alt-Right’s pain points, which often align with mine, and addressed them.
Some say I addressed them better than their own leadership.

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A white racist group was championing a black man. In a way, I became one of their
heroes. I did the impossible.

How is it that a white racist group is cheering on a black guy? It provoked thought, made
people question the validity of reports on the Alt-Right and challenged the idea of what
racism really is.

Of course, I faced backlash from the African-American community but I didn’t care. All
they would do is give us more visibility by talking about Hotep Nation and I.

I knew that my blog post was genuine and if someone read it with comprehension, they
would see there is no official alliance - only a history lesson.

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But I also knew that the headline was click bait and triggering. It gets the people going!

This is another example of how I used an enemy to my advantage to further my agenda

- and I did it without attacking anyone. I turned an enemy into an “ally”.

How to Use Enemies

Let’s explore specific ways to manipulate enemies for your benefit.

When a blog article is written about Hoteps, we highlight it in tweets or directly respond
to the tweet.

Sometimes I’ll screenshot and highlight inaccuracies in an article and combine them
with reaction memes. This adds humor and makes light of a negative situation while
providing entertainment value.

The most important psychological aspect here is, my opposition thinks we’re important
enough to smear. Since the Hotep opposition is a liberal funded machine, we appear
SUPER-IMPORTANT. You’re only as big as the enemy that acknowledges you.

Our message is so potent that they have to attack. Otherwise, we’ll turn minds into
thinkers instead of followers faster than they can make them stupid.

Feed them to the trolls.

Like I illustrated earlier, you can unleash the trolls. If I see someone that needs some
humbling, I’ll quote tweet them with sarcasm and my trolls follow up.

Your followers usually respond to people with the same energy that you do.

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What does this do?

For one, it manipulates the algorithm. Somewhere in the Twitter algorithm there’s a
hierarchy of importance. One of these is mentions. How often are people talking to you
or about you. But mostly, just interactions with your @username.

Twitter does this thing where they “Suggest People You Should Follow”. That’s just one
example of how being mentioned a lot will gain you more attention.

“It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you.”

The snowball effect of one troll is AMAZING! They could cause an entire conversation
about you completely separate from anything you’ve ever discussed.

You’ve basically infiltrated someone’s subconscious mind. They’re thinking about you.
They’ll tell friends and family about you and vent with a storm of tweets.

Offline mentions lead to online mentions. But if you’re not mentioned offline then your
online mentions mean little.

I’ve watched people form little groups and conversations just to talk bad about me.
Rumor says I never buy pampers for my daughter - who’s 14 years old. Ha!

The cult-leader guy said I was drinking African baby blood. Now that one was hilarious!

I make one trip to Africa, visit some schools to provide aid and now I drink African baby
blood. The stories are hilarious. But if people aren’t making weird stories about you, are
you even making an impact?

You might worry about bad press. I don’t. All press is good press. As long as you keep
your nose clean, every rumor will roll off you like water on a duck.

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Enemies also, help form your brand. Enemies are quick to criticize and point out flaws.
Listen to the naysayers because they hold the key to sharpening your brand.

Building a following on Twitter is all about knowing your audience and the language they
speak. Each audience has their own unique terminology that hits on their emotions.

When Hillary Clinton campaigned for president, she used the term “DEPLORABLE” to
describe Trump supporters and that quickly became a part of their identity.

Many Trump supporters began identifying as “Deplorables”.

There was even a campaign surrounding exactly that - a deplorables meetup called
“The DeploraBALL”. They owned it. It became a part of their identity.

What about when Trump made the typo, “covfefe” and it went viral? That instantly
became a part of his fanbase-language. By understanding these things you can connect
with your audience on another level.

Look at the example below. I was able to use the language of my followers and connect
with sports enthusiasts at the same time. It’s a running joke that J.R. Smith drinks
before his games. Nice little mix I create there.

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Obviously, banter is going to go over well, but by using the current terminology of the
fanbase-language I’m able to connect with them deeper. I’m no “poser".

Additionally, using a term from a previous memory gives the reader a feeling of
nostalgia. Using covfefe, now they have taken a trip down memory lane so my
connection level is deeper.

The surface was comedy, the next level was insider language and the third was the
feeling of nostalgia.

When you create jokes or almost anything creative, think three-dimensionally. Or four or
five. But don’t over do it and try to hard.

Another example that builds camaraderie within my base is the term “snowflake” which
is used to describe hyper-emotional and illogical left-wing liberals. Our enemies.
By using this term to describe them, I connect with my audience and they feel more
compelled to engage.

Know your audience's likes and dislikes. You may need to take some chances and
mistakes to discover them. This is referred to as a “hot button” in the sales industry.

By identifying the things your audience likes, you can bring them more of that and
increase the connection you have with them.

I often find that this world or region I live in (America) thrives on negativity. If you know
the dislikes of your audience you can connect with them more closely.

By simply avoiding being the dislikes you avoid mutiny. By identifying others who are or
perpetuate those dislikes, you can highlight and target them to build a stronger
connection with your audience.

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You want to find things that you also dislike so that it's genuine. Don’t be fake on social
media. People can see right through it. Being fake is wack. BE REAL and people will
have no problem supporting you.
For example, I absolutely loathe when my fellow African-American associates blame all
of their problems on white people. It’s cringeworthy. I almost want to vomit.

Low and behold, my fellow conservatives hate this too. So, this becomes a bonding
mechanism. I can now exploit this on demand, since there’s plenty of victimhood in the
black community. At will, I can bond with my audience through this medium.

When a black person is murdered by a police officer, more often than not, black people
will blame the officer involved. I agree. But by the time you do this, it’s too late. That
person is gone. What will you do to prevent the next murder? I believe that you should
spend more energy trying to prevent a disease than cure it.

Colin Kaepernick used his platform to shine light on police brutality, which became
headline news. But it didn’t explode until President Trump displayed disdain for the
action sighting the disrespect of the military.

Do you see how enemies can bring light to your cause now?

Current events are one of the best ways to connect with your audience because the
topic is on everyone’s mind. By injecting yourself into the conversation you become one
of the focal points of the event. You can steer some of this attention to you and your
cause.

Because I deeply feel as though Colin’s actions were not genuine I hopped all over this
thing. I wrote blogs and my team posted videos and tweets about it. Of course, we
gained a ton of attention from this.

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People like to hear many different points of a conversation to give them a well-rounded
view of a situation. By providing additional points, you provide value to your audience.
It’s exactly what the media does to keep people engaged long enough to view and/or
click on an ad.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” — Ancient Proverb

By identifying the enemy you reveal potential allies.

If you ever want to know dirt on an enemy, you can rest assured that their enemy will
give it to you - voluntarily and/or involuntarily.

You can always bet on Russia to spill the beans on America’s dirt and vice versa.

Enemies are important but so are friends. By connecting with the enemy of your enemy
you can create fresh alliances. They don’t even have to involve an assault on the
shared enemy.

Enemies can become distractions so keep your cause in mind. If the enemy of your
enemy feeds your cause, ally. If they don’t, make them temporary or back burner for
future assaults against your common enemy or something else relevant.

Never Attack First

When it comes to war, the side that attacks first looks like the provocateur.

The public will view them as the bully and side with their enemy.

Never attack first unless your hands are clean and the public views your target as the
enemy too.

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Check out this example of a company
that failed to follow this rule.

Trivia game company, FleetWit,

thought it was a good idea to attack
their competitor, HQ. Wrong!

FleetWit set themselves up for failure

and public embarrassment. Their
situation is not squeaky clean yet they
decided to attack a competitor. Not
only that, a large competitor with a
larger budget and way more popularity.

Look at this comment from one of their users on that Facebook post:

FleetWit’s blog headline was, “The Problem with HQ” and this user responds with,
“The Problem with FleetWit…” - Ouch!

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This comment exposed the lack of engagement the app is getting which revealed a
weakness. This company failed to deliver a great experience to their community and
showed that they aren’t as popular as their competitor who doesn’t have these issues.

How can you attack someone doing what you can’t do? Epic fail!

Not only that, look at their customer service response. They directed the person to
customer support. TERRIBLE! People HATE that.

They should have responded in an open and transparent manner. They should have
admitted their fault and advised how they plan to resolve the issue right on their page.
After all, this is viewable by the public.

Lesson learned. Only attack first if you can assure that the public will view you as the
victim and not the bully. The public has to hate your enemy too or it will backfire.

Content Creation

Without content, I believe you can completely forget about building a cult-like following.

I believe every person looking to build a following needs to have a blog and video
channel. I built our blog on Wordpress. My hosting is through 1and1.com. It cost me
about $7 for the first year of hosting - and Wordpress is free. The blog template was
purchased from themeforest.net.

Themeforest.net has thousands of templates to choose from. To ensure you pick the
right one, I suggest that you list all the things that are important features for your blog.

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The most important thing is to make sure the mobile user experience (UX) is robust.
The home pages I prefer, have a search bar, large image content container (LICC) for
the latest stories, trending posts and a store.

The search bar should auto populate blogs as the user types in their search query but
this is not mandatory. But you want the search bar to be clear and present - easy to find.

If someone wants to see if you wrote on a particular subject, they need to be able to
easily navigate to those blog posts.

The LICC is a personal favorite of mine because you can control what people see when
they first land on your page. You don’t want people randomly scrolling down your site
because often this leads to drop-offs - people leaving your site.

I usually set this to chronological order with the most recent blog post displayed first. I
like to bring people to the most relevant content. Usually this prevents a drop off.

Alternatively, you can set this to the most popular piece of content you have but I prefer
not to because I always put my faithful readers first.
I give my faithfuls the highest priority over new viewers. Faithfuls are the ones that keep
coming back to your site over and over again. In Google Analytics they call them
“returning users”.

If a returning user comes back to your site and sees the same thing all the time, it may
bore them and could lead them to believe there’s nothing new on the site so they
“bounce” or “drop off”.

But if they’ve been trained to visit the site and know that the large image content
container always shows new content first, their user experience is better. They can
quickly come to your site, see the new content, tap and engage.

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Let’s talk trending posts. These are the posts that get the most engagement or views
within a particular period of time. I prefer templates that provide a beautiful UX for this,
usually set to the right of the LICC on a desktop experience and underneath the LICC
on a mobile experience.

This is great for returning and new users. It lets them know what people are reading
most on your blog. For returning users, this could direct them to popular content they
may have missed previously. For new users, it will direct them to the best content first
which will increase engagement and prevent drop offs. Also, since this is your best
content, these new users are more likely to become returning users.

The benefit for you is, your popular content becomes more popular. This is going to be a
huge benefit for search engine optimization (SEO) which we will cover later.

Now, the store is super important and it has little to do with earning cash, although that
is a nice benefit. The idea here is to immerse people into your brand. When people
wear your brand they become a part of your extended family. People who wear your
branded gear are far more likely to stick as a supporter than those who don’t.

You can look at it as an investment. People who buy your merchandise have invested in
you. They now have a vested interest in the success of your brand.

When people invest on the stock market they want to see that company grow. The
same applies here. These “investors” will support you more than others and see to it
that you succeed.

At the moment I use Design Crowd to crowdsource designs. You pay about $250 and
get over 50 design submissions.

I find it quite difficult to track down a solid designer. Not to mention one that will be
reliable. Many designers take way too long to deliver.

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I also find that designers are emotional people. So, when you ask them to make
adjustments to a design they get annoyed.

DesignCrowd.com removes all of these headaches and streamlines the process. It’s a
bit on the pricey side but the work is guaranteed and I haven’t been disappointed yet.

Video content doesn’t have to live on third-party platforms like YouTube. Post videos
directly to Twitter. For the same reason you post gifs and memes, you want to post
videos - they stand out on the timeline.

Videos autoplay (without sound) so your timeline comes alive. It’s animated. I see many
companies post links to their product promo videos on YouTube and get no a single like.
Their page looks dull!

How do you promote your YouTube/Vimeo/Twitch content on Twitter?

Take snippets, highlights of the video and upload them directly to Twitter. Then reply to
that tweet with a link to the video. If people expand the thread, they will see the full
video link. Your followers don’t have to expand it though. The entire thread will appear.

People are time conscious so you can hack their attention by doing this. They don’t
want to sit through a 10-minute YouTube video, but if you give them a taste, you can
entice them to.

The other reason you want to post videos on YouTube is psychological. Without them,
you’re just some anonymous account tweeting. You could be anybody.

But with videos, you verify and prove that you are who you say you are.

39
Also, 55% of communication is body language. When someone can see you speak
they can read your body language. They also, feel like they know you better. This
creates a deeper connection with your followers.

I love broadcasting live on Periscope. I launch my live streams right from the Twitter
app. This puts your live stream right on their timeline so they can easily engage. All it
takes is a tap and they are now watching you live.

Doing it on other platforms doesn’t provide the same benefits because as we discussed
before, these people are being redirected away from Twitter.

Tell your followers to hit the retweet button on the live stream and now you will appear
on their feed as well.

This content lives on Twitter forever. At least until you delete or get banned. Periscope
allows playback. Use this to your advantage and resurface your video content for those
that may have missed it.

I think the sweet spot for length is about 10 minutes. Social media has tremendously
helped to reduce everyone’s attention span.

I find that when I go any longer than 10 minutes there’s always drop-off. Collect your
notes prior to the stream, make your points succinctly and exit.

Another thing you should be mindful of is the first 60-120 seconds of your feed. Don’t
start getting into the content. Give people time to enter the stream.

During this period, play some background music and give people instructions like
retweeting and subscribing. Also, you can use this time to give a brief synopsis of what
you are about to cover.

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I use this time to shout out people as they enter the stream. You can see their names
pop up at the bottom so show them some love. Everyone wants their five minutes of
fame. Be the one to give it to them.

We created this thing called Woke Water, which is basically just a 12 oz. bottle of Opal
Springs spring water. But we priced it at $125 per bottle.

When we first announced this thing, people went mad trying to figure out what was so
special about this water. It’s a just a marketing hack to bring awareness.

Can you believe we actually sold two bottles? Both of those individuals were given
100,000 shares of our company as a token of appreciation.

Anyway, every live stream I have, this kid Stewart pops up and asks, “Is Woke Water
still $2,500?” Hilarious! He’s like a part of the show now.

That’s branding success. That’s making a connection with the audience. All organic.

I get trolls on my live stream and I usually ignore them. Unless I can make an example
out of them. (See the section on trolls)

Don’t respond to the trolls unless you can find a way to bring value to your viewers,
whether entertainment or intellectual value.

Great content ideas are hard to come by. Often we get ideas then forget them. Here’s
a quick hack, as soon as an idea comes to mind, email it to yourself.

Include a description of the idea just how you see it in your mind - a sentence or two. If
you’re driving, use a voice recorder or voice to type.

41
Sometimes if I don’t explain exactly what I was thinking at the time, I’m completely lost
when I revisit it.

I can’t count how many times this has happened.

Live streaming engagement may varies by time of day.

I believe that more professional content is better digested during the day and the more
entertainment-like or risqué content should live at night.

You’ll find that you’ll get more viewers at night because people aren’t at work and are
conditioned to view video content in the evening - thanks to television programming.

Ask your followers what they would like you to cover on your blog and listen to them.
Some of the best content ideas come from your followers.

A nice little hack is including keywords with a question mark in Twitter’s search engine.
It’ll return results of questions people have asked in tweets.

For example: “crypto?” or “amazon?”

The search will return pages of results with people asking questions about the keyword
you specified. Answering these questions in a blog post or video can become valuable
content. Don’t forget to share the blog post with the person who asked the question out
of courtesy.

You could even just quickly tweet that person and start engaging with someone new that
could become a part of your audience or mastermind group.

“Knowledge is the springboard for imagination.”

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Read, read, and read some more. Countless ideas are created just from reading.
Imagination is spawned from knowledge. Your imagination can only grow in proportion
to the knowledge you obtain.

10 pages per day is equivalent to 3,600 pages in a year. That’s about 10-11 books. You
can accomplish a lot with a little.

When I read, ideas just start flowing. Often these ideas can be unrelated to the material
I’m reading. I’ll stop reading, send myself that idea email, then go back to reading.

Also, ideas compound. Behind one comes many.

Turn your ideas into a to do list. How many ideas never get executed upon? Don’t be
that person. Ideate and execute.

Ideas are gifts from God or the Cosmic - to not execute on them is to say you don’t
appreciate the gifts. But remember, not everything needs to be executed right away.

Some ideas will only become relevant in the future so don’t be hasty.

Evergreen Content

What is this evergreen content? Whoever created this term related it to evergreen trees
because no matter the weather, they survive. They are always here and always
relevant.

For example: “Has Social Media become Worse than Slavery?”

Social media is going to be relevant forever, arguably. So, this type of post can be
promoted nearly everyday and it will be relevant.

43
But something like, “Making Sense of Charlottesville” was only relevant for the moment.
It could possibly become relevant again in the future but it’s not always relevant.

If the content isn’t “evergreen” I probably won’t write it.

What I may do is find a way to take relevant topics today and use them as examples in
a broader scope to create evergreen content.

I almost didn’t write this book because I’m still worried that Twitter might not be relevant
in the future. Then my book is dead.

I think you get the idea here.

The Perfect Blog Post

What does a perfect blog post include?

Most importantly, it needs a strong title that jars emotion. Do a Google search on
“Trigger Words”. Terms like die, fear, new, and nazi all invoke emotion. Think about
adding these kind of terms to your title to increase your click through rate (CTR).

If people never click through to your blog post, they’ll never get to enjoy your great work.

What is click through rate? clicks/impressions = CTR

10 clicks / 1000 impressions = 1% CTR

The higher your click through rate the more search engines will favor you. If you appear
in search results but no one actually clicks your link, what good is that?

44
Search Engines will assume nobody wants your content and will bump you down.

Also, when your blog post lands on someone’s timeline, you’re competing against the
other tweets people are posting. You have to stand out.

Let me show you an example. A blog post title could read “How to keep your job” but
that’s pretty boring. People may say to themselves, “I think I’m doing a good job of that
already so I don’t think I need to read this.”

But if the blog post title read, “How to avoid getting fired from your job”, they may be
more inclined to tap/click because getting fired is a fear. You can even take it a step
forward and add numbers. “13 ways to avoid getting fired from your job”.

After you do your searches on “trigger words” and read extensively through the online
material I’m sure you’ll get the point. I don’t want to spend too much time on this.

Images are vital to a blog post. Not only do they break up the monotony of reading but
also adds context your writing. It draws people in. Think about adding charts and graphs
to support what you’re saying in your writing.

Include gifs to add humor which invokes emotional responses in people. Emotional
responses make your work memorable and shareable. If people don’t share your writing
with others, then it just wasn’t great writing.

Gifs also animate the blog post giving it life.

You can use this app Gifitize, which I’m a co-founder of, to pull gifs from just about any
platform, especially Twitter, and save them right to your phone in seconds.

Did you see a gif on your TL you wish you had? Gifitize it!

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If pictures are worth a thousand words then gifs are worth a million. Use them!

Another form of picture content are infographics. A well thought out infographic will drive
a ton of traffic to your blog. They can live independently of your blog post. Often people
will share with friends if the information is pertinent. This will create viral sharing.

I use piktochart to create infographics.

They have freemium and paid versions. Currently I use the free version just fine for the
purposes I’ve designated for myself. If you have a budget, I’d suggest paying a
professional to create them. They usually start at about $500, professionally.

Remember to tag the images within the post. When you upload media to Wordpress
make sure you fill out the “Title” and “alt text” fields with the pertinent keywords.

The actual image file name is important as well. Never use spaces and always use
dashes (-) to separate words.

Never let the image file name be something like img501.jpg. That’s going to destroy
your SEO efforts. It should look like spongebob-buried.jpg.

You can use keywords relevant to your blog post but I suggest using keywords relevant
to the actual photo. If you use a Sponge Bob gif, add ‘Sponge Bob’ and descriptive
keywords to these fields.

Like “Sponge Bob buries himself”. You have to think about what a user would type to
search the image. Often you’ll get search traffic from these alternate sources. They may
not be relevant to your content but it is supplemental traffic.

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If the gif/image/infographic are also pertinent to your blog post title, you’ve found a
sweet spot. When a user searches for that image, they may find that your blog post
adds context they may have been looking for.

You don’t want to annoy people. That’s an easy way to spike your bounce rate and
reduce your search engine ranking. Posting images with irrelevant keywords could
irritate a user because it led them to an unintended destination.

Videos are the capstone to a blog post. I don’t force them in but if relevant I try to
include them.

If there is a part of your blog post that needs further information, you can instead create
a Youtube video explaining that par briefly, then include it in your blog.

This will increase the user’s time on site (which search engines love) and help with your
Youtube ranking. Double bonus.

Besides, some information people rather watch or listen to than read. Especially, if it’s
really technical and needs a layman's breakdown.

Do all of this and follow the Yoast plugin instructions and you’ll have a perfect blog post.

“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
- Sir Francis Bacon

I wish I could go in depth on the art of writing but I’m probably going to write a separate
book about that. Instead I’ll give you two great sources, one of which I’ll include in its
entirety here.

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The first one is George Orwell’s 6 Rules of writing:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to
seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of
an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

The other one is from the creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams. “The Day You Became a
Better Writer” This thing is probably going to go against everything you learned in grade
school about “great writing”. But grade school writing is much different than sales
writing.

We all know school doesn’t teach you brand creation. Ha!

Many digital marketers say that a blog post should have more than 1,200 words
especially for SEO benefits. This is not absolute though. Search engines heaviest
algorithm weight is relevance and user experience.

The blog I just suggested by Scott Adams is only about 300 words and it’s extremely
popular among writers. Many people link back to it as a resource just as I have.

Trying to write 1,200 words just to write 1,200 is going to be a disaster. It’s going to bore
you and it’s going to bore your readers. The reason they say 1,200 is best is because
usually when you have 1,200 words it means that you’ve provided a ton of value to the
reader. Which equates to high engagement, more shares, low bounce rates etc.

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Don’t be afraid to write a hit piece that has less words but jars people’s emotions and
makes them want to comment and share. Sometimes short and sweet works best too.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO is what gives you traffic. When people visit search engines they are looking for a
piece of content. You want to be on the first page.

Knowing your audience plays a major role in SEO beyond all of the empirical data like
search results, keyword monthly searches, etc.,

If you know what your audience is looking for, you can provide it. One question I always
knew stood in people’s mind was “Why do the Kardashians date black men?”

So, I did a quick search to see if anyone has tackled the subject and as I hoped, they
didn’t. That post is now live on our blog, HotepNation.com.
It is the most consistent driver of traffic and a top post weekly. Most of our search traffic
comes from that post.

See 30-day chart (Google Search Console):

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This is due to the high visibility of the Kardashian brand. Write almost anything on them
and people will click it.

If you want to write a fitness or diet blog, just title it, “A workout fit for Kim Kardashian”
and watch how many people click it. It’s going to outperform something banal like “A
summer body workout”.

Feed off what’s extremely relevant and link in the care & cause.

My blog does not have anything this to do with celebrity gossip or the Kardashians so
there may be cause for concern since there could be a disconnect with my target
demographic.

This is something I mull over from time to time. I do need to write more content that
more closely connects with our target audience and provides organic search traffic.
But it’s the Kardashians. I’ll be hard pressed to find anything that can compete with that
media giant.

However, I did turn the article back around to what our brand represents, added a few
Amazon Affiliate links for monetization, and deep links. We’ll retain something at least.

Again, this is Evergreen Content.

Connect your blog to Google Search Console. I’m not going to give you specifics on
how to do that here because there’s plenty of that online. With Wordpress, there are
plugins that make this task turnkey.

Google Search Console (GSC), is going to give you search data. It’ll tell you how your
website is ranking for specific keywords and the amount of clicks you get for each
keyword. It’s a vital tool to measure how well you’re doing with SEO efforts.

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Now, let’s circle back to the Kardashian thing. When I first wrote the blog post it had one
title. But after the search data came back I adjusted it based upon what people were
searching.

The original title was “Why do the Kardashians date Black Guys?”. But GSC revealed
data that said I was getting the most clicks when people searched “Why do the
Kardashians LIKE black guys”. By swapping “date” for “like” I can target the exact
keyword string people are searching and provide exactly what they want.

This provides a better user experience.

“I love Wordpress because they have a plugin for everything. No coding experience
necessary!” - Bryan Sharpe

Install the Yoast plugin and use it to optimize your blog post. (I’m not going to go into
great detail here because I could write an entire book about SEO. I just want to provide
you with enough information to get you going)

The Yoast plugin will help you optimize your title, meta description and other elements
of your blog like “readability”.

Check your permalink structure. This is super-important. You don’t want permalink
structures with dates or anything other than keywords.

Good: http://website.com/your-keywords-here
Bad: http://website.com/post1234

Include the most important text from your title after the domain name. Also, keep that
part of the URL short. I’d say less than 25 characters but you can search best practices
on this independently. Ideally, you want your domain name to be short too.

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Domains like http://whatareyoudoingwithyourblogtoday.com are just too long and search
engines won’t favor you. Less is more, right?

Discover your keywords and use them in your domain name.

When I started hotepnation.com my desired keyword was “hotep” so I made sure to

include it in the domain.

Search engines read from left to right just like us. Whatever keyword you use, should
come first. http://nationofHotep.com would be bad practice because it does not begin
with my desired keyword.

The same school of thought applies to your blog post titles. Keyword first.

You may ask, “but your Kardashian post didn’t begin with Kardashian”. That’s true and
maybe it will perform better if I did but I don’t think so. We also have to factor in UX.
What exactly is the person looking for? If they search “Why do…” they may scroll/swipe
past by post because the western mind reads left to right.

You have to make a judgement call on these things. I almost always put the user first so
UX is my priority. The domain will never change so I think it’s important to think about
keyword data first over UX.

This is not the end all be all of SEO as there are many factors to ranking on a search
engine, not to mention Google is consistently changing the rules to their algorithm but I
do want to cover, link-backs

Link-backs are when other sites link to yours. Your weight of their clout is measured by
DA (domain authority) and PA (page authority).

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If you earn linkbacks from sites with high DA & PA it will help you rank higher. There are
many ways you can get these both by work and just organically.

If you’re putting out resourceful content, people will link back to your site without you
having to ask. If your blog post is filled with data and research, you’ll increase your
chances of this happening. For example, case studies, guides, etc.

Sometimes people will mention you or your site but won’t link back. There are tools like
Google Alerts and Mention.com that will automatically find these for you. You can also
pop your keywords and website into a search engine and see what comes up.

If you find one where they don’t link back, tweet or email the author and kindly ask them
to. In the subject of your email put: “I love your blog post!”

Leading with compliments with ensure that your email gets opened. People hate spam
and love getting their ego stroked. Play on that desire.

Another method is adding your site to Web Directories. You can find these simply by
searching “web directories list”.

Many sites aggregate this information, so the work is done for you. Copy and paste
those sites into a spreadsheet for tracking purposes.

Often you’ll find that many of them are down and no longer in service. One-by-one,
submit your blog to the available sites.

You’ll need the website title, short description (140 characters), and five keywords, so
have that stuff ready.

Your spreadsheet columns should be Web Directory name, category, submit date, &
location.

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“Location” is the actual URL of your web directory listing after you’re approved. Some
sites will email you when you’re featured but many don’t.

You’ll have to manually check back every once in a while to see. So, just type your
website name in their search bar to see if you’re listed. If you are, copy and paste that
URL into the location column.

You can also get link-backs from Reddit, Digg, Pinterest and other places like forums. If
you get high engagement on those platforms you’ll see the traffic and SEO boost in your
Google Analytics dashboard.

Timeline Architecture

This term “timeline architecture” (TA), that I coined, refers to how your timeline looks
when someone visits your profile. Is it organized and easy to read? Or is it a
disorganized mess of retweets and replies?

Two things I will suggest are deleting replies and retweets at various times of the day.

To delete tweets I use this tool for iPhone called “Keep or Delete”. It works like Tinder.
Swipe right to keep, swipe left to delete. The cost is $0.99 but for the amount of time it
saves me, it’s well worth the buck.

Deleting tweets from the Twitter platform is time consuming.

To keep good timeline architecture, the first thing I do before I tweet in the morning or
the last thing I do at night, is timeline maintenance.

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When I tweet my morning followers can get a recap of what I was discussing the day
before, at a glance - I’ve deleted the noise.

Put your followers FIRST.

Deleting tweets is also a play on perception. Let’s tackle the play on perception and
Twitter’s algorithms.

When people see a tweet with high engagement they are more likely to engage with it.
Monkey see, monkey do. When people see a video with millions of views on YouTube
it’s usually highly respected and people are more likely to watch.

The same mentality applies here.

Any tweets that do not get high engagement should be deleted. High engagement is
subjective based upon your own tweet engagement averages.

When I returned to Twitter after a hiatus, high engagement for me meant 10 retweets.
These days it’s more like 50-100. My new goal is 500 - 1000.

If a tweet is lower than your average engagement, maybe you should delete it.
Obviously it didn’t connect with your audience so it serves no purpose.

Sometimes there are tweets which you may want to leave up that do not get high
engagement and that’s fine.

Maybe it’s evergreen or an announcement so you can retweet it later to get the
engagement. Maybe it’s something you tweeted at the wrong time. Retweet it during a
more favorable period and see what happens.

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These tweets may include announcements, product promotions, blog posts etc. These
you probably want to keep as reference, archive and timestamp of your work.

Let’s talk algorithms.

Twitter suggests “People You May want to follow” or “Tweets you may like” or they’ll
feature a tweet one of your followers liked. Engagement determines if you show in these
spots or not.

Tweets with high engagement may be suggested to other users including those that do
not already follow you. By deleting tweets with low engagement Twitter’s algorithm can
only choose the best of the best of your work.

Imagine submitting to your boss a compilation of your best and worst work to review at
a board meeting. Surely, your boss does not need the worst of your work so scrap it.

If you allow your weak tweets to live, Twitter’s algorithm may become “confused” and
choose to promote weak tweets.

It’s in Twitter’s best interest to feature only the best of the best.

If you have a mixture of low engagement and high engagement tweets, it will lower your
average engagement. But if you leave only the highly engaged tweets, you can trick
Twitter into thinking you’re more popular than you really are.

Let’s go back to perception for the moment.

If you peruse a timeline and almost all of the tweets have high engagement you’re
probably going to be impressed. You'll think that person is popular. You’re more inclined
to follow.

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But if they have no retweets, you just think that persons is tweeting to themselves.
Cringe!

Social media is all about perception and the better your image is the more likely you are
to rise in popularity.

I use this tool called socialblade.com which allows you to see the metrics of any user.

What you’re looking for is your average retweets and likes. Maybe you want to create a
spreadsheet and track these numbers week-to-week or month-to-month.

I just track them in my head.

You can also use that tool to see your follower growth rate and projections. It tells you
how many followers you’ll have at a particular point in the future. Although, I’m not too
sold on the accuracy of it.

It’s more than likely just saying that if you keep doing what you’re doing now, this is
where you’ll be in the future.

I’d ignore that data if I were you because it could be discouraging. You want to be at a
million followers and that thing won’t reflect anything like that. Besides, you won’t be
doing the same thing you’re doing now. You’ll be getting better and creating exponential
growth.

For example, my current growth rate is what it is but I’m about to release several books
which is going to increase my credibility which will also boost my follower growth rate.

Sometimes the numbers don’t actually give you the real picture. Those averages
include your low engagement tweets so it’s not a real measure of your best work.

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What’s your average retweets and likes on a particular type of tweet?

Let’s now talk organization of a Twitter timeline and why it’s important.

When you tweet, you remind people of your presence. It’s like, “Hey! Remember me?”
At that point, a person may visit your profile to see what they’ve missed from you -
catching up.

If they go to my timeline and it’s messy (full of retweets and retweet replies) then it’ll
take them longer to get to “the sauce”. Everybody wants the sauce!

The sauce is the high engagement content - the “juice”. It’s the stuff that gets the people
going!

Often I’ll delete retweets and retweet replies so that people can get right to the sauce
when they go to my timeline. I have periods in which I’ll tweet and periods which I limit
my tweeting.

Best times are EST 8-10am, 12-1pm, never 2pm, 5pm and beyond. You can almost
guarantee that I’m deleting tweets and retweets at 2pm most times.

2pm is the worse time to tweet but when we talk about the graveyard shift, you can
apply those same rules here.

After a break period (3 hours+), before I tweet I make sure to do timeline maintenance
and restore my timeline architecture to presentable condition.

Now, when I tweet following a break, when they go look at my timeline it’s perfectly
curated so they can see the best of my tweets in just a few swipes.

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People sometimes think negatively of deleting tweets but this is a courtesy to your
followers. It allows them to get to the best of your daily content without having to
spending precious minutes scrolling past the retweet promotion and other tweets that
provide little value.

What does this do for you? INCREASES ENGAGEMENT! Chances are, if you didn’t
perform timeline maintenance, your followers would have never gotten to the best of
your morning tweets and your engagement would suffer as a result.

Create a great experience for your followers and they will take care of you. You always
have to put them FIRST. You’re here to serve the people and provide value. They’re not
here for you to just take from. Be generous with yourself within reason.

The Perfect Tweet

In the “Perfect Blog Post” section of this book I provided some writings tips. Apply them
to your tweet style.

Objective vs Subjective. Subjective is how you feel and objective is the analysis of
something when you remove your personal bias. Logic vs emotion.

I’m naturally an objective person. I like to looks at things from all angles. If I feel my bias
take over, then I force myself to take a deeper objective look at the subject at hand.

The reason why I bring this up is because you have to understand when you’re tweeting
objectively and subjectively.

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I find that objective thoughts can agitate people. People always want you to take their
side. They want definitive answers and responses. Objective thought usually doesn’t
accommodate people’s emotions - it does quite the opposite.

Similarly, a subjective thought could rub people the wrong way as well, if it doesn’t align
with their beliefs.

Use this tandem to your advantage. Push people’s buttons and force them out of their
ego or deeply into. Or don’t.

“Sometimes there’s more power in saying nothing than there is in saying something.”

Let’s talk about voice. In the marketing world, this is something you’ll hear brand
managers speak of. What is the voice of the brand?

Are you sarcastic, amiable, easily irritated, or laid back? Find your voice and stick to it.
No matter what you choose, even if it’s an angry voice, stick to it. This is branding.

You want people to get accustomed to your voice. Familiarity brings comfort. People
hate change.

Also, know when to deviate. If you’re calm, every once in a while tweet upbeat. It
catches people off guard and they usually respond. Keeps them guessing.

My voice is controlled. I’m never agitated or angry with people and I don’t insult people.
But every once in a while I deviate.

What does the perfect tweet look like?

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A tweet isn’t perfect unless it includes an emoji. Tweets with emoji receive a 25.4%
higher engagement rate than those without, according to Larry Kim, founder and CTO of
Wordstream.

I recommend having your own branded emoji. Not the one’s that Twitter charges a
million dollars or better for (unless you have the budget). I suggest choosing an emoji
that relates closely to your brand and its message as your own personal emoji.

The perfect tweet also includes a gif and or meme/image. Memes and gifs are the
ultimate communication add-on. Like I suggested earlier, you can swipe gifs with
Gifitize.

Tweets with images are 34% more likely to get retweeted than those that don’t,
according to postcron.com

Twitter increased the character limit from 140 to 280 but what does that mean?

Overall, I think it was a bad choice for the platform. We don’t need 280 but 140 is too
little. I think the sweet spot could have been at 180.

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My theory is partly proven by Twitter’s test group data which says that less than 5% of
users breached 140 characters and only 1% actually used all 280.

I think 280 makes for a big distracting mess on the timeline. Way too many words for a
public that doesn’t understand punctuation and formatting.

Should you use all 280? The brief answer is NO. You shouldn’t even use all 140. Keep it
short and sweet. One liners are great if they’re packed with a punch.

Tweets with about 110 characters get 17% higher engagement, according to
socialmediaexaminer.com, but that study is from 2014 so I’d take that with a grain of
salt.

Instead of thinking about tweets from a metric perspective I like to think about them from
a visual perspective on a mobile phone device, since that’s where most people use
Twitter.

I prefer tweets that take up about two full lines or one whole line on the screen of my
iPhone7. Intelligence is exhibited through brevity and simplicity. We’re not writing a term
paper here people.

Get your point across and get out. Usually, when people write, they make redundant
statements. Revise your tweets and delete the redundancy.

Is there purpose to use the full 280 characters or close to? Yes, absolutely. There is a
time and place for everything.

I prefer to use them for detailed explanations and responses when a thread is not
necessary.

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With these long form tweets, PLEASE use punctuation so your message is carried
across clearly. Make it easy on the reader so they get what you’re saying quickly. The
faster they get your point the faster and more likely they are to retweet, like and share.

Separate your 280 into separate lines like paragraphs. Each whole sentence is a
paragraph. We are not in grade school so four sentences does not equal a paragraph.
Four sentences in paragraph equate to confusion and low engagement.

Look at how I’m writing this section. No paragraph exceeds 3 lines. I cringe when I hit
three lines. Two lines looks best to me and helps the reader digest your communication
easily.

With your 280 tweets, write a line or two then created a new paragraph with a line of
space between each. Thesis, body, conclusion is the format, just like traditional writing.

Let the first line introduce your thought and captivate the audience. Think of it as your
headline or subject line for an email. It has to be attention-grabbing.

The second paragraph (line) should support your first line and the third should cap it off
with a captivating summation of your point without redundancy.

Let’s talk about links now, because I know you want to drive traffic to your blog, product,
YouTube channel or whatever.

It’s known that tweets with links get less engagement than those that don’t but this is not
always the case. People don’t want their Twitter experience interrupted by being
redirected offsite, is my assumption. It interrupts their Twitter experience. They want
catch up with their timeline etc.

They want to just keep scrolling!

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How can we circumvent this? Put the link in the middle of your tweet instead of at the
beginning or at the end. You’re 26% more likely to get retweeted, according to
postcron.com

It looks like this:

Otherwise It just looks ugly!

Twitter cards should be activated on your blog, (you can use Yoast SEO for Wordpress)
but it’s not for you. It’s for viral sharing - when others share your post, an image will
automatically appear in the tweet.

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More engagement!

Throw your links in between your long-form tweets and flourish. This also looks great for
your timeline architecture.

What you want to do instead is attach the image from your blog post and ‘x out’ the
Twitter card when it appears.

Another great advantage to using an image instead of the Twitter card is because the
image will land in the “media” section of your profile. Twitter cards DON’T!

When someone chooses to peruse your profile and they view your media, it will be
there. More engagement!

Twitter cards include the title of your blog post and short description. You already have
enough text in your tweet so you don’t need more.

That’s just redundant. You just included your blog title so why repeat it. That’s a
disservice to your followers and can reduce engagement.

Let’s talk about hashtags. Hashtags and I have a love / hate relationship. Mostly I
hate them because they’re ugly. They’re a different color from the rest of the tweet so
the eyes have to adjust for a brief moment to read them. Blah!

But sometimes they are necessary. Here are my main two uses for Hashtags.

The first use is for archiving and branding. If I’m covering a particular topic or
discussion, I’ll always use the same hashtag. This allow others or myself to do a look
back and see all thoughts on the related subject.

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Every brand needs their own hashtag(s). Discover what they are and use them
sparingly. I don’t know if trying to create them is a good idea unless you have a large
spend or influence to drive them.
Do not spam your hashtags in every tweet. You’ll look like a narcissistic amateur social
media user and intelligent social media users with notice, get turned off or worse, they
will call you out and embarrass you.

Twitter users are more intelligent than Facebook and Instagram users on average. I
have no empirical data to prove this, although the data may exist, but I know this in my
heart to be a fact.

You cannot fool a hardcore Twitter user.

What you really want to do is let them come to you organically from your following. If
your audience is engaged, they will create hashtags for you or you can discover trends
from their engagements.

When your following creates the hashtag or associated terms with your brand, they feel
involved and immersed. These people are far more likely to stick, support, buy, and
share.

I believe that the only other reason you should use a hashtag is when it’s a trending
topic. This is joining the conversation. It’s terrible when brands tweet while there’s a hot
topic on the timeline that EVERYONE is talking about.

You look like you’re under a rock and detached from reality. To a hardcore Twitter user,
YOU’RE NOT REAL! Authenticity is key.

Twitter now has a nice feature that displays a mini profile pic and states “@VibeHi is
tweeting about this”, in the trending topics. Use the trending tag your tweet will appear
there.

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Do you want visibility? Tweet about the trending topics and use the associated
hashtags. If your tweet gets high engagement, it could appear in the “TOP” section of
the trending topics or, as a consolation, it will appear under “LATEST”.

If you earn a “TOP” spot, you can expect more engagement than usual.

Is this the end all be all of a perfect tweet? No. I’ve had tweets with four words, no
Gifitize, and no emoji go “viral”. Why? Timing!

Timing is crucial to a perfect tweet. If you’re flowing the conversation on Twitter and
know what to say and when, you’ll win.

Again, this comes back to listening and not being narcissistic. Too often brands are like
a stuck up model chick. All they do is talk about themselves. People HATE that.

When you go to an event, you don’t just talk about yourself. You join a discussion with a
group of people and add value. That’s the idea here.

If promoting your brand, service or product adds value to the conversation then that’s a
win win for everyone. But DO NOT force it. It’s the 21st century - people know when
they’re being sold something.

Tweet threading is an awesome feature that allows you to link a series of tweets
together. People call them threads.

Use the feature to flush out complete thoughts that won’t fit in one tweet. Also, as we
covered in this book, less characters gets more engagement.

Instead of jumbling a full thought into one tweet, which can be daunting to read,
separate them with a thread.

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In the first tweet of a thread, mention that the tweet is a part of a thread. When that
tweet gets retweeted, user’s not following will know to expand the tweet to get the full
thread. Otherwise the other tweets in your thread could go unnoticed.

You could also number them and if you’re good, you can include how many tweets are
in the thread in total. For example, (1 of 5). This prepares people ahead of time so they
know how many tweets they are about to read.

Sometimes when people know it’s a thread they may not feel like taking the time to
expand but if you give them a heads up they are more likely to engage.

Let them decide if they want to get that deep into your thought.

Turn threads into blog posts. If you have a long thread, that is a blog post. Take that
thing and turn it into content.

Because your followers may have already read your thread you should provide more
value in the blog post. Take that time to provide additional thoughts, pictures, charts,
and added context.

This is also a great way to document or bookmark some of your best tweets.
Sometimes we get a random impulse or stream of consciousness and we’re not near
the computer. Sometimes it’s something that needs to be said right then and there and
cannot wait for a blog post.

Thread it now, blog it later.

Threading is not always the best usage of multiple tweets. After all, Twitter will only
display three tweets of the thread on someone’s timeline, and the rest will be hidden.

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Twitter displays the first, second and last tweets of a thread.

Instead, rant with a string of individual tweets.

With individual tweets, you assure that each tweet gets impressions. You may flood
someone’s timeline but that’s not always bad. If the tweets are high value and relevant,
you can get quite a bit more exposure than with threading.

This method will also look like you’re “going off” and sometimes people like that. It gives
an air of authenticity.

Often this method has brought me more followers than threading. Threading is great
when it’s all one complete thought that needs to be expanded and linked together like a
document.

But sometimes like-thoughts can be tweeted separately because each one is it’s very
own punchline or triggering headline.

Mix it up and use a combination of both and see which works best for you and when.

6 Types of Tweets:
" Quotes
" Jokes
" Content
" Questions
" Declarations
" Advice

Quotes get high engagement. Use them. One of my favorite people to quote is Sir
Francis Bacon. My favorite quote from him is,

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“Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.”

I love this tweet for two reasons. As a man it puts the male/female relationship in
perspective by age. It’s something every man can learn from and how to view women.
Too often young men get caught up chasing women and lose money and time.

The other reason I love this quote is because it’s a bit misogynistic. Someone could get
triggered which is going to increase my engagement which in turn will increase my
ranking in the Twitter algorithm.

Jokes are great because everyone loves to laugh. Twitter is filled with jokes.

Share funny videos or memes and comment on them. Use them to illustrate your
sentiments toward a particular trending topic.

Black Twitter is filled with jokes. When something happens in the media, you can bet on
Black Twitter to keep you entertained. Some of the best jokes live in this section of
Twitter and several meme trends originate here.

If you become the butt of the joke, that could be a good thing. Depending on how your
profile is setup and the quality of your timeline architecture, if Twitter decides to joke on
you and you trend, you could gain a ton of followers.

Content is king (or queen). We went over this earlier so I don’t want to spend too much
time on it. Just make sure you’re creating content.

Questions are great because people love to talk about themselves and give their
opinions. You can play on peoples’ natural narcissism.

Ask your timeline what their favorite athlete or movie is.

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This or that questions are great too! Do you like this or that? It’s much easier to get
engagement on these instead of open-ended questions. Open-ended questions require
more brain power and people are generally lazy.

This or that questions are quick and easy to contemplate and respond to - usually.

Declarations are pivotal. Make bold statements that some people are sure to disagree
with.

Here’s another one; “Only toxic masculinity can raise a young man.”

This tweet is controversial and could provoke a response.

A quick shortcut is to make generalizations. Generalizations often stem from

stereotypes but not always. When you make generalizations people are sure to
respond.

Use words like, ‘only’, ‘all’, and ‘everyone’. They’re sure to get the people going.

Advice is super-popular on Twitter. Whether right or wrong, people are always giving out
advice. If you can mix in some 3D work with your advice, even better.

For example. What if your advice is a funny declaration? You’ve just created a mix of 3
types of tweets. Jokes, declarations and advice.

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There’s a myriad of accounts that give advice. Many happen to be pseudo-self-help
gurus. And they grow massive followings just by giving out advice consistently.

You can be one of those people or mix it up.

The law of opposites is one more thing I’d like to add. Learn it and understand how to
use it to make an impact. Here I’ll give you an example.

“Sometimes bad things happen for good reasons.”

‘Bad’ and ‘good’ are opposites, obviously. But for some reason it hits hard in the mind
for people. If you read poetry or listen to good Hip-Hop you notice artists dong this.

It adds a bit of zing to your tweet. Figure out how to add this to your repertoire.

Earlier I wrote, “You can accomplish a lot with a little.” Did you notice it then?

Best Times to Tweet

To make this super-simple, it’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The logic behind this
revolves around engagement.

Tweet at the suggested times and you’ll get higher engagement. But first let’s talk about
the advantages of tweeting outside of the primary time periods.

If you’re outside of the suggested parameters, you can still stand out because there’s
less competition. Less people tweeting means people may see your content since
there’s less noise.

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One example is tweeting at the wee hours of the morning (the graveyard shift). There
may be less people online but for the people that are there, you have their full attention.

These people are constantly refreshing their timeline out of boredom and desperately
looking for something. Be that something.

Use this time to post your blogs or provide those thought provoking tweets. This is a
great time to make a connection.

Also, people run on schedules. Some users are online all day but others have specific
times that they usually log in - whether they’re aware of it or not.

The graveyard shift is it’s own audience entirely. Personalities are even different in this
group. Each shift has their own personality types. Morning people are morning people
and night owls are night owls.

You can create connections with each. If you know your audience well, you’ll notice that
the morning crew and night owls appreciate different types of content respectively.

The graveyard shift is where you can get those wild tweets off. These people seem to
be less judgmental so you can be more controversial.

The morning crew appreciates news updates and positivity. People are just starting their
day and need something to give them that spark to get through the day. Be that spark!

Give them that motivation or provide a theme for the day for them to follow. How you
start your day is how you end it.

If you can get into people’s minds first thing in the morning and be the positive influence
in their life, they will love you. Also, by hitting them before bed you can embed yourself
in their subconscious mind which will carry on into the morning.

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I’ve had followers who have stated that they’ve dreamt about me. Get your mind out of
the gutter. Ha!

I can’t say I haven’t had dreams about the timeline as a Twitter addict. It happens.

Let’s talk best times on EST because I live on the east coast and corporate America
runs on east coast time.

Morning: 8am - 10am

Noon: 12pm - 2pm (Best time)
Night: 6pm-10pm

Breakfast tweets are critical.

Twitter is the new morning newspaper. If you are known for being a source of news in
the morning, you’ll find that people just go directly to your page everyday to catch up on
the latest.

I’ve had many followers say that they check my page religiously. I love that I can be an
influence in people’s life. It’s truly fulfilling, therapeutic, and gets me through life.

Morning tweets can be news updates of course. Show people what they’ve missed.

One of my followers (@TJRicks_TSP) does Periscope live streams with positive

affirmations to help people manifest those desires and dreams they want most out of
life.

This is a great value provided for free to people who need it most. A great morning
routine to start your day includes listening to positive messages.

How you start your day is how you end your day.

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Good morning tweets are great if you can target a specific audience. This goes back to
knowing your audience.

Here’s an example.

My audience is family oriented so this speaks to them. We are united in a cause.

Another example: “Good morning to everyone who would like to see SeaWorld shut
down.”

I know I spoke about Sea World earlier. I can’t stand them. Putting ocean animals into a
baby pool is such cruel treatment. They are utterly disrespectful. It’s quite revealing of
humanity’s consciousness to allow this.

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Anyway, with a conscious audience, you can see how this would connect.

The bottom line is, address your audience’s care first thing in the morning.

You can also speak from an air of positivity.

Lunch tweets get a ton of engagement. This is the time when people are usually on
lunch break or for the lazy/night owl people, just waking up.

Also, 12pm east coast time is 9am west coast time so you’re getting a bit of the morning
crowd from the far coast. A great mix!

News and latest trends/events are discussed and argued over during this period. This is
a great time to post your blog or video content. You should be posting your blogs during
the morning time period and retweeting it during this lunch period.

You can increase your tweet frequency during this period because there’s a ton of noise
at this time. Maybe once every 10-15 minutes. That gives you room for about eight good
tweets.

In the morning period I’d say every 30 minutes is feasible because there is less noise.
Less noise means that if you tweet too much, you could flood someone’s timeline.
Especially those users that don’t follow many people.

This could become an annoyance and cause people to unfollow you. You basically
drowned out everything else on their timeline. You don’t want to be someone people
have muted.

I think the perfect mix is three hard-hitting tweets. A good morning, a comment about
something relevant, and some original content.

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Night tweets are a little different but not much. Primetime TV is on and you can take
advantage. I touched on leveraging trending topics earlier so apply those principles
here.

Popular TV shows that trend give you a great chance to connect with your audience in a
place they can relate to. “Games of Thrones” and 50 Cent’s “Power” are two examples
of this.

Sporting events are another example. When a big play happens in basketball, football,
or futbol, they trend.

Watch this stuff, live tweet about them or even create content around them. You’ll often
get engagement from people that don’t even follow you. This is another great way to
grow your audience and get new followers.

Remember, it’s not about you, it’s about them - your people. Connect with them in the
places that they hangout to create bonds.

Tweet frequency is something I’ve touched on throughout this work but I want to go a
little deeper.

Obviously, tweet frequency is how often you tweet. The sweet spot is no more than
every 15 minutes but like I said earlier this rule can be broken. This includes retweets.

The idea behind this 15-minute rule has to do with engagement. Get more retweets and
likes. The more retweets and likes you get, the better your chances are that Twitter will
feature you in the trending topics and “tweets that you might have missed” in your
followers’ feed.

Here’s the theory behind this and it refers to a user’s “retweet jar”. I touch on this later
so if I repeat myself a bit, please forgive me. I just want to make sure you get it.

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You have to give people time to see your tweet. That includes both people currently
online and the people logging back in. With a high tweet frequency you can become
noise, which will oversaturate yourself. People will get fatigued.

With a lone tweet, that is “the perfect tweet”, you can stand out. Your loyal readers will
appreciate the tweet more. The strategy here is to create scarcity and rarity.

You want to appear exclusive and premium. Someone tweeting all day looks common
and can come off like they have no life.

Tweet that fire and close the app. Closing the app helps to restrain your impulse to
tweet again.

If you have more fire tweets, just save them as a draft and unleash them when the
timing permits.

Your drafts should have at least 10 tweets that you can unleash at any given moment.
Timeless pieces. Meaning that they are always relevant. Evergreen.

Alternatively, you can have a tweet saved for the perfect moment. Let’s say it’s
something about Kanye West. You can wait until he trends, which you know he will at
some point, then unleash that saved draft then. Timing is everything.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

Allow me to pull from Robert Greene’s best seller, “The 48 Laws of Power”, again.

“Use Absence To Increase Respect & Honor: “Too much circulation makes the price go
down: The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. if you are
already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked

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 about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through
scarcity.””

I remember reading something a marketer wrote about taking an absence from Twitter -
they said that you should announce when you are leaving and when you are coming
back. That’s the cordial approach.

I don’t think the marketer was referring to the tactic I’m talking about so do not
announce your leave of absence. Just disappear. Leave that question mark in people’s
mind. Even lowering your tweet frequency dramatically can have a similar effect.

I take breaks for health reasons. Too much social media is horrible for the subconscious
mind. All those thoughts that are not your own are just swirling around in your mind and
creating God knows what. But it ain’t good.

Sometimes you need a detox and mental clarity. You’d be surprised how much better
you feel when you completely avoid the online world.

When you go on vacation, take a vacation from everything. Especially social media.

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This could be hard though because there are so many experiences you want to share
while you’re away. Log them, and tweet them when you get back.

The Perfect Profile

What does the perfect profile look like? There are four main parts:
" Header
" Profile Picture
" Bio
" Pinned Tweet

The header is a great place to start your branding efforts. There are several approaches
but I prefer the minimalist approach. It’s just my taste.

The visual concept is one that’s captivating and pleasing to the eye. Often this could be
landscape photography, a graphic design visual or a combination of both.

You know you have a great header banner when you see people steal it. You want that.
Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

The design I use is a minimalist plain look. One color background with contrasting color
copy and logo. Without all the background noise you allow people to get straight to the
point of what you represent.

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It’s the name of the company/brand with just the logo. Alternatively, you can include a
call-to-action. In fact, I recommend using a call-to-action in your banner.

For example, “Get our free vegan guide now”. The bio only allows limited space for
messaging so using the banner for an extra call-to-action or emphasis on an existing
promotion or campaign is how you optimize organic growth.

I don’t recommend having more than one call-to-action because things can become
confusing rather quickly. Often when you ask people to perform too many actions they
end up performing none.

The profile picture for a personal brand is obviously going to be a different approach
than one for a product, brand or service. If you’re a person, I’d highly recommend a
professional headshot or action shot.

Action shots may include your work in the community, in nature, at the office or
wherever. But I do believe that a headshot is your best bet.

Why? Because the extra details of a busy photo could stand out less on the timeline. A
headshot stands out and embeds in the mind easier. It’s a quick visual communication.

For brands, it’s all about color scheme. On Twitter you never use blue or white. Those
are Twitter’s brand colors. Also, never use black, white, or grey. All of these colors will
cause you to blend in when your goal is to stand out.

Our brand colors are black on grey. But for Twitter, I chose to use an orange as the
background color of our logo (profile pic). That thing pops!

Getting attention is sometimes more important than sticking to some brand color
guidelines. Traditional marketers (boring outdated people) are going to demand that you

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stick to your brand colors and I agree, just not always on
social media.

You can stick to a brand color scheme if need be. Or

maybe you want to define brand colors that stand out on
social media separate.

The bio is not where you tell people about your product. I
believe that’s where address their pain. This is where you
sell the reason why people need to be following you.

You can use a combination of describing your brand or

product and why they should follow you simultaneously.
For example, if you sell vegan products:

“Look out for discount codes and new free information surrounding everything
veganism”

By mentioning discount codes you incentivize people to follow. Nobody wants to miss
out on discounts. And offering free and new information is valuable. People love staying
on top of the latest trends.

With that bio you not only told people you sell something without telling them but you
also promised free value.

I’m a firm believer that if people want to know about your product they’ll tap the link in
your bio. Hopefully, your website is optimized to educate people about your brand/
product/service simply.

If you’re an activist, don’t just put “activist” in your bio. Use something better like “Follow
my journey to make the world a better place. #Activism”

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I’m still experimenting with my perfect bio. It’s going to change when this book releases
to: The world’s most enigmatic author and speaker! Learn marketing from the pro.

I don’t know why but ‘author’ seems like a title that garners respect.

Additionally, I don’t always follow my own guidelines because I’m always experimenting.
Not every campaign is about growing my follower base.

My audience grows because people share with friends and say “You have to follow this
guy!” I think when we embark on our Twitter following building journey, we have to
define what our goal is and how we want to get there.

My current bio does follow the rule that people have to know what you’re about in 5
seconds or less. Also, we know that I’m anal-retentive about minimalism. I loathe being
wordy. I try to say what I have to say in as few words as possible.

Also, I’m always experimenting. A previous bio of mine was “Don’t check my likes”. I use
“don’t” as a method of reverse psychology to assure that you DO.

Humans are hard-wired to defy control.

In my likes I curated some of my best content.

What was the result? When people visited my profile they ended up sharing the liked
content and commenting on it. Mission accomplished!

The last piece to a perfect profile is the pinned tweet. The pinned tweet should be a
your latest campaign, promotion, or content.

Every new blog post I create, gets pinned for at least a day.

Whatever you want to drive traffic to the most, should be a pinned tweet.

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Far too many people and startups ignore something so simple. If you’re not pinning
tweets, you’re missing out on valuable traction.

If you want to sneak in another call to action, which I recommend, use the location field.
Instead of entering your actual location, enter a call to action.

For example, “Tap the link” could replace “New York City”.

Drive that traffic!

Bots & Automation

I was introduced to bots in the early days of Twitter by @KingDemic, an internet guru
that makes a living monetizing social media.

He showed me a piece of software that allowed you to control numerous Twitter

accounts at once - completely automated.

At the time (2010) you could buy Twitter accounts for $5 on fiverr. I don’t know what
they cost these days but the practice is now frowned upon by Twitter.

Before I go into detail, allow me to detour really fast.

I believe that Twitter and other social networks like bots. Bots mean more accounts that
they can boast during their earnings announcements which affect the value of their
company.

If they are an early-stage startup, these user metrics are even more valuable.

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They’ll say they have X number of users but how many of them are real users? If it
helps your company get more investors why would you want to ban them?

Twitter can leverage these bots to get more money.

February 26th, 2018 - Twitter says they are cracking down on bots because of
something about Russians influencing the U.S. elections.

Also, bots can create a poor experience for users if harassment ensues. If your core
base becomes irritated you could lose company value so it then becomes in your best
interest to limit the bots.

You can’t completely rid them. People are always going to outsmart the system. Where
there’s a will there’s a way.

Now, let's get back to the bots and what you can do with them.

Let’s say you want to create a trending topic “organically”. I’d connect the bots I
purchased to the software then have them all tweet the hashtag around the same time.

This could cause it to go “viral” but it’s not guaranteed. You are competing with other
users and topics during the day so timing is key.

To make the bots appear real, I’d scrape other user’s tweets. Scrape is term that means
“gather”. I could scrape Shaq’s tweets and then have my bots randomly tweet his
previous tweets.

To the average user, they won’t know it’s a bot account or even Shaq. If you’re really
diligent you scrub the tweet list for any tweets that might tip someone off.

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Like Shaq tweeting about winning MVP or something. Obviously nobody is going to
believe that your bot account played for the NBA.

Choose an account that has back-to-back viral tweets. But be careful. Twitter is now
banning accounts that steal tweets.
Another great use for bots is engagement. If you want to appear higher in the top
search results for a particular topic, Twitter’s algorithm is designed to prefer tweets with
high engagement.

If I set all my accounts to retweet and like my tweet, I’ll rank higher than other users.

Another cool feature I like is setting the bots up to retweet each other. 75 bots all
retweeting each other starts to create a nice web of engagement around whatever you
desire. You could convince some users that “everyone” is talking about you.

Let’s backup a bit.

How do these bots gain followers? It’s pretty simple. Follow, like and retweet other
users.

If your bot accounts are setup for retention, people are likely to follow.

For example. If your bots tweet news on cryptocurrency, you can get many people to
follow.

By having 75 bots all within that space gathering a following you can insert whatever
you want into that community. If you had a crypto how to book, you could easily insert it
into a community and people might think they came across it organically and share.

Obviously, your bots need to follow and engage people with the same interest that
pertains to what you’re selling or promoting.

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If you setup your accounts properly like I’ve shown in previous chapters, you can create
a nice network around a specific niche.

The software I’m using currently is Tweetliker but I don’t use it to full capacity. I don’t
even use bots.

I never did get into the bot thing. It felt fraudulent and it was time consuming. I’m just
happy to have the experience to know how it works.

For my clients I use the software for automation. My main usage revolves around
following and engaging users to create a following or sell a product.

The software allows you to specify keywords. I can set the account up to like tweets
from anyone who mentions the keyword string, “crypto currency”.

The idea here is that someone sees the notification and checks out your profile. If they
find value they may follow or even enter your purchase funnel.

Using this method you can keep you following to follower ratio low.

If you don’t mind having a ratio close to 1:1 then you can use the following method.
Follow people that use particular keywords.

The best method currently is to target other influencers within a particular space.

Find the top 5 accounts in your space for example. Load their names into the software
then have the software only follow people who comment on tweets.

This will increase your chances of gathering a more engaged audience. People that are
actually active.

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You don’t want an account full of people that log onto twitter once a week and never
tweet. You want addicts. By just following another account’s followers, you will get a ton
of junk followers.
These are just people just following back. Often because they think that’s the thing to
do. Or it’s just an automated sequence to follow back.

The thought process here is that if I follow you back I’m more likely to keep you as a
follower. And this is true but will you be an engaged follower?

I don’t want a bunch of followers that are just there to make themselves look/feel good. I
want people that can help me reach my goal.

What you need to understand is that automation is not bad. It saves time and if you are
genuine in what you do, it can help you and others.

Let me go into more detail because I may not have been clear enough in my
explanation.

Let’s say @DollaSignBeezy, tweets some latest news about $LTC.x. And hundreds of
people engage with the tweet, you can target just those users.

Could there be bots in that batch? There probably are. But you’ll get more engaged
users. Set your bot to like tweets from everyone that interacted with the tweet.

The software is awesome. I think I paid $250 for a lifetime account that also includes
Instagram software. I mostly use it for instagram.

You can also, set it to follow or even reply.

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For example, you can set the automation to tweet a link to your ebook to each user in
that tweet or any user that tweets a specified keyword.

The software does more but you get the idea.

Roundteam.co has some cool software that automates retweets your favorite followers.

You simply add these desired users to a list, set the frequency for your retweets and it
does the rest.

This is a great way to engage and support users you love without having to do it by
hand or camp out on Twitter all day.

I do not use this for my personal account but have used it for clients.

Be careful who you add though. If they are controversial, you could accidentally endorse
an opinion you didn't mean to. Then you wake up to angry followers. Oops!

The software is free if you let them tweet on your account periodically about how you
use their service. Cost ranges from $10/mo - $120/mo depending on how much activity
you require.

Another great automation tool is IFTTT.com.

I don’t want to go into great length about what this does because it does so much. Go
check it out and see for yourself. It’s also free!

I’ve used it to automate a vegan account previously as an experiment. I basically, used

popular blogs’ RSS feeds as automated tweets.

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It’s helpful to those blogs because they get more traffic from a new source and helpful to
me because I don’t have to create new content to provide value for my followers.

The account was completely hands off after I initially setup the IFTTT automation.
Eventually it was stolen by an associate and sold off but that’s another story.

At least someone got some value from my work so I’m not too mad.

Let’s wrap things up for this section really fast.

Why use automation? Obviously, to save time and energy.

If you want to use the multiple bot method, go ahead. Just beware of the Twitter
crackdown. You could end up having to reactivate and authenticate accounts.

It’s probably more of a headache these days but not impossible to pull off.

Retweets

First we should address making content go viral, since content is what’s going to make
you great.

Let’s say you want to get retweets on a recent blog post but you want to get off a few
tweets within a small time frame.

Simply, unleash the tweets, maybe they’re shout outs or something, then tweet the blog
post last and wait. Don’t tweet or retweet.

This logic behind this is that the tweet with your blog post will be the most recent on
your feed and others’ timeline. If you tweet your blog post before your shout outs or

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other random tweets, it’ll probably get less engagement because of tweet frequency or
their “retweet jar” is full.

Let’s break this down further.

If your tweet frequency is high then people will get “tweet fatigue”. Basically, they’ll be
tired of seeing you and so, give your tweets less attention.

What is the retweet jar? Everyone has one. It’s how many retweets one is willing to give
someone or multiple people within a span of time.

If someone has already retweeted one of your tweets five minutes ago, they are less
likely to retweet your next tweet.

Also, if you retweet someone else, and that tweet gets retweeted by your followers then
your next tweet could possibly suffer from lower engagement.

Wait, 15 minutes, THEN tweet/retweet! This also creates gaps between your tweets on
the timeline so you’re not appearing back to back.

If people respond or quote retweet in reference to the blog post tweet, retweet them.

Quote retweets are best but if a reply is a strong testimonial people will investigate the
tweet in reference.

By posting it last, it will be the most recent tweet on a user’s timeline.

The quote tweets will promote the content.

Retweet old viral tweets. Head to the Twitter search bar and use the following
operator: from:yourUsername

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This will return search results of your most popular tweets under the “Top” tab.

Alternatively, you can enter a keyword and then your username like so:
keyword from:yourUsername

If it was successful before it will be successful again. There’s always content that new
followers haven’t seen yet so resurface it.

Full list of Twitter search operators here, which I’m sure you’ll find useful.

Quote Tweets

Quote tweets are a subset of retweets. Let’s cover how they should be used.

My account is “marked sensitive”. I’m on the blacklist at Twitter headquarters. Anyone

with a decent sized following that doesn’t agree with liberal politics is on the blacklist.

Jack, the founder of Twitter, follows me. He knows who I am. And I loathe the way he
runs the company. But that’s another story.

The reason I bring this up is because I found a work around to hack engagement when
you are blacklisted.

When your account is marked sensitive, your media (photos/videos) will not appear on
the timeline (unless users change their settings) and they also will not appear in the
Trending Topics.

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Your tweet will appear with a blue link, but no media will show. This will cause many
people to scroll right past your tweet. No bueno!

Quote tweets are the workaround.

A user that’s not marked sensitive will have their media appear. You can piggyback this
by quote tweeting. Taking advantage of their media.

I’ve done this and you can see a huge difference in the engagment.

Notice how this tweet gets 637 retweets. If I would have posted the media myself, I can
guarantee it would not have gone viral.

Quote tweets are a great way to piggyback others and get engagement of your own.

I think many people have selfish intentions when they use it. Many people don’t want to
retweet others because they want the engagement for themselves.

Sometimes I do it because I know that my following will engage with a tweet more if
they see my profile appear in their feed. It’s a good way for my to bring something to
their attention and raise awareness for something I think they should see.

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You can also quote tweet yourself. This is a great way to resurface or repurpose one of
your previous tweets or content.

Growing Your Following

Something you must first understand is having a quality following. You can have 2,000
followers of influential people (influencers) or you could have 2,000 followers of
nobodies.

If you’re influential you’ll attract high quality followers.

We’re going to talk about sniping for followers. You can snipe for followers and you
can snipe for high quality followers.

Of course, high quality followers take more work and time to obtain.

Use the lists feature. Following a ton of people will leave your main timeline in disarray.
There’s just way too many people which creates way too much noise.
With lists, you can curate a timeline with just the voices you want to consume. I
categorize mine into, Hoteps, finance, marketing, etc. Create your lists based upon your
interests/needs and add the appropriate people to them

By doing this, you can see exactly what you need to see at a glance.

Maybe create a list of influencers you’d like snipe. Add them to this list, follow and
engage.

Follow them closely and try to be of service to them. Bring value. In the Guilty/Innocent
by Association section, we’ll cover this in more detail.

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Don’t forget to tag these influencers with your new content that you believe fit their
interest. If they like it, hopefully they’ll share it with their super-engaged audience. If this
happens, expect to see some serious growth.

If they don’t share, at the very least you may get some valuable feedback. Listening to
this feedback brings you one step closer to partnering with that influencer.

Mix high-quality following in with the little people. Little people are crucial and still hold
word-of-mouth power because they have friends and family.

The little people do have influence. Often you’ll find that they have close connections to
other influencers - an influencer may value their opinion. So, the little people can make
recommendations that land you in high places.

Also, the little people are powerful in numbers. They can overwhelm someone’s
mentions - bringing you attention. They can sway the decisions of other influencers and
other little people. There’s power in numbers.

Don’t forget the little people and remember that you are working for them. You’re their
Jesus. You resolve their concerns and address their pains. Stop doing this and you’ll be
at their mercy - and they are ruthless!

Here’s how to get the little people and maybe some high quality followers too, if you’re
targeting correctly.

Initially, I grew my following by following people. Back in the early days of Twitter you
had this thing called #FollowFriday. The majority of the participants practiced follow for
follow. I could gain 100 followers on a Friday in about an hour.

Another thing was #TeamFollowBack. Participating in this could give you results as well.

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These things are still around but not as popular. Users became divas and are follower to
following ratio conscious. Everyone thinks they’re an influencer. Ha!

I found an account that had the type of followers that I wanted so I bookmarked their
page and everyday I followed as many people as I could.

Twitter has limits though. I believe Twitter’s limit is based upon a 2:1 ratio. You can only
follow double the amount of followers that you currently have following you. Afterwards,
Twitter will not let you follow anymore people.

I did this by hand, which is boring and time consuming. I suggest using software like we
discussed earlier.

I don’t suggest buying fake followers but I did experiment with the practice when it was
super-easy in the early days of Twitter.

You could buy 50,000 followers for $5 on fiverr. These are not real people so they won’t
engage. It does look suspicious when you have a ton of followers but the retweets and
likes don’t match.

I didn’t care in beginning because I knew that perception was everything. If people see
that you have thousands of followers they’re more likely to follow you. They’ll think
you’re important. So, I tested it.

Most users aren’t that internet savvy so they didn’t notice how disproportionate my
following to engagement ratio was.

One great benefit to fake followers is the hack of Twitter’s follow limits. With so many
followers you won’t hit the 2:1 ratio limit. Which means you can follow more people and
supplement your following with real followers.

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Parody/Feeder Accounts

Parody accounts kill it on social media. From Sponge Bob to Goku, they give people
that touch of nostalgia or relevance that excites.

Let’s say you’re thinking about launching a new brand into the health category. You
could create a parody account of a carrot and personify it to the max. People love silly
accounts like this, if done right.

You can grow the following on that account pretty fast, in comparison to some boring
new brand. Maybe setup target the keyword “carrot”?

Use that account as a feeder account.

What’s a feeder account? It’s kind of like your very own influencer.
Using the follow for follow, mass following people, and other hacks in this book, you’ve
successfully grown this feeder account to tens of thousands of followers in a niche.

On this account you don’t care about following ratio. You just want high impressions.
Eyes on whatever gets tweeted or retweeted.

Use this feeder account to help grow your main account. Your main account is probably
conscious of the follower/following ratio for perception purposes.

When you tweet from your main account, retweet from your feeder account. This is
organic hacking. If you build several feeder accounts, imagine the possibilities.

I have a backup account with over 2,000 followers that follows no one using this
method.

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If you don’t mind being a scumbag, switch the names, bio and artwork of the feeder
account to your brand and boom! Instant targeted following.

Now you can start spamming those users with your product.

I don’t know if I recommend this method if morality is a concern. It’s kind of deceptive.
Expect to lose a few thousands followers as well.

When I got tired of following 50,000 people, I reduced my following to about 300.

There were a few people that were upset that I unfollowed them and I lost a few
thousand followers. But it had to be done. It wasn’t planned or intentional, it just worked
out that way. If I had to do it all over again, I still don’t think I’d change a thing.

The experimenting gave me the insight I have today.

All of the tips in this book will help you grow your following. This book is all about
building your following but more importantly how to build an engaged following that will
love you - creating deep connections.

Another cool trick is using particular hashtags and keywords. Many users are using
automated software so you can take advantage of this.

For example, if I tweet the hashtag #BizDev or even just put it in my bio, automated
software will target and follow me. Business Twitter has many hashtags you can target.

Startups and business professionals often use automated software. So, taking
advantage of common business keywords can grow your account.

Some keywords you can try are: entrepreneur, investing, startups, IT, coding, app,
mobile app, growth hacking, marketing, cryptocurrency, sales, etc.

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There are many keywords and hashtags you can target. Have fun experimenting but try
to use keywords that correlate to your cause.

Try this neat hack. Follow and unfollow popular accounts like celebrities. They are often
targeting by automation. The software usually follows the most recent followers of an
account.

By following you can get picked up by the software as someone to follow. Rinse and
repeat. This doesn’t always work though.

A great web-based software tool I’ve used is Socedo. They target users based upon
keywords. You type in your list of keywords and they populate a list of people based
upon those parameters.

You can setup sequences to make it appear as if your automation isn’t automated but
instead looks organic. Basically, you can set it to like someone’s tweet, wait a day, then
follow them.

If they follow back you can add to the sequence an automated DM. This is a great way
to drive traffic to a website. Send an engaging message with a link and boom. Traffic!

Also, check out commun.it web-based software. This thing is loaded with features like
showing your most engaged users, and users you should probably follow based upon
their popularity.

One cool feature they have is for link sharing. Let’s say you want to share a story from
one of your favorite blogs. The tool allows you to add a follow button to the page when
shared.

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When someone visits that link, at the bottom, a follow button will appear. Just drop your
link into the software and it will create a new link for you. Then share that link on Twitter
and if you get a decent amount of retweets you could add more followers organically.

It’s kind of sneaky because people may follow thinking that it’s your blog, if they’re not a
savvy internet user.

I pulled this from their website. I love browser extensions!

Step 1: Download it: First you need to download the browser extension

Step 2: Open the extension from any blog or website to start sharing! There are several
ways to share content using the Commun.it browser extension.
" Click the Commun.it icon that appears to the right of your browser search bar
" Hover over any image to share it
" Right click anywhere on the page
" Share tweets from your Twitter feed

Step 3: The extension will open. Choose which profile you want to send the post from,
and share! Share your post immediately by clicking 'Share now' or schedule it for later
by clicking 'Best Time'.

“Be humble.”

All startups track their social media growth. As an individual, I don’t. I try not to even
track my engagement. These things can go to your head and cause you to make bad
decisions or become full of yourself.

You may notice that a particular style of tweet always gets high engagement. Be careful
of the feedback loop. You could become a slave to it. Your followers start to control you.

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Remember your purpose and stick to it, even if you get lower engagement than the off
the cuff tweets. Just because people like something, doesn’t mean you should keep
feeding it to them. You could get branded as something you didn’t intend to.

Include your Twitter handle everywhere. There should be a follow button on your blog, a
link in your video description on YouTube/Vimeo, on flyers - EVERYWHERE!

Everything in this book will grow your following so implement the tips and tricks I
provided.

Leaching for Followers

You can leach off other accounts - people do it all the time. Most of the time I find it
done in very inorganic manner.

For example, if a popular account tweets about a recent bombing and you reply to the
tweet with your new song, that would be inorganic. I hate that.

When you reply to tweets, make sure it’s relevant to said tweet.

The reason why you want to do this is because you attach yourself to a viral tweet. Your
tweet is now living inside a celebrity’s tweet thread. People will see you (attention) if
done right.

Follow the perfect tweet principles we discussed but the most important thing here is
speed.

Why is speed important? The first one to the tweet usually gets the first slot in the
thread after the original tweet which means they’ll get the most impressions.

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You don’t want to be in the “Show More Replies” part of the thread which means people
now have to take another action to see your tweet. People are lazy and stingy with their
time. Most people will drop off before the ‘view more replies’ sequence.

But you can still leach down there. You could possible own that space which isn’t a bad
idea if the tweet is viral enough and something you’re passionate about.

Your “clout” or “importance” or whatever Twitter HQ calls it in their algorithm takes

precedence here. If you’re not engaged on Twitter you might not get that second spot.
Someone more popular can bump you right out the way.

You can also, bump others if you can considerably generate more engagement than
them on your tweet.

If someone replies to a Donald Trump tweet (he’s got innumerable faithful leeches) and
your reply is first (speed) but has no retweets, you’ll get easily bumped.

Make sure you word your tweet in such a way that it could live as a great tweet on its
own and retweet it to your timeline (since replies are not seen by your followers).

Sometimes replies, when retweeted, have no context so your timeline won’t understand.
But a retweet could cause them to investigate the origin of what you replied to. You still
have to curb your expectations because most people won’t.

If you’re using bots, you can easily score the top reply on viral tweets and get those
organic impressions which lead to more engagement and followers.

How can you improve your speed for this technique? Twitter allows you to get alerts
from accounts when they tweet. Set your alerts for viral tweeters and reply!

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Social Aura
Your social aura is the vibe you give off. It’s the perception people have of you. How you
view yourself is usually not how others view you.

Knowing who, when, and how to reply to people affects your social aura.
When do you reply to? Anytime you can provide value and/or receive some. Not
everything warrants a reply.

Popular accounts keep a particular aura around them by hardly replying to anyone. Its
this thing where they keep their distance between themselves and the people. A
distinction that says, “we’re different”.

I hate the practice but it's so necessary. Sometimes when you give too much of yourself,
people get comfortable and take advantage. They get comfortable enough to speak to
you with indecency and make off the cuff tasteless remarks because they think you’re
friends. They think they know you.
This is human nature and it’s been demonstrated with women countless times.

The minute you show interest, she becomes disinterested. But the minute you forget
about her, she remembers you.

The same rule applies to Twitter - if you’re not a company.

If you’re a company, everyone needs a reply but you can still create an aura by ignoring
trolls, tasteless humor, etc.

People ask questions out of general curiosity or animosity. Learn how to detect each -
it’ll be in their tone.

Reply to the genuine curious cats but ignore the argumentative barking dogs.

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The barking dogs usually get angry when you don’t answer and go on long rants about
you and/or the topic. They’ll stir up attention for your benefit.

When they reach of place of genuine curiosity and not animosity the two of you can
interact. Until then, you must maintain an aura that demands respect.

You’ll be surprised at how many people change their tune when they notice they’re
being ignored. Many have come to me more humble the second time around.

Going back to the leeching hack, there’s something else you should think about.

When you tweet and people reply, you can attach their reply to the thread by replying.
You can award them the top spot. Liking and retweeting adds weight too.

The creator of the thread has authority here. The first reply gets attached to the thread
and the rest may not appear, as Twitter likes to gate them with another tap - “show more
replies”.

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Don’t make the mistake of giving your trolls or dissenters the top spot by replying to
them. Reply where there lies value and a boost for your original tweet.

These threads operate chronologically so if you wanted to join the thread example
above, you’d reply after Mr. Trillionaire Tye’s Apr 1 tweet. If you want the authority and
engagement, you would answer his question. People are always watching.

Guilty/Innocent by Association

I have dissenters that will scold some of my followers for merely following me or
retweeting me. People will often say things like, “Don’t follow me if you retweet Hoteps.”

On Twitter, you’re guilty by association. Weird, I know.

The environment has gone left since the murder of Mike Brown. In short, political
correctness has become the new culture but Twitter used to be a place where you could
say anything and everything.

I feel like the first amendment of the U.S. constitution is threatened. But that’s another
story for another book.

The lesson here is, be mindful of who you associate with. I follow right-wingers and
some people that may be deemed racist. Of course I get a ton of heat for this. But I
don’t care because like I already discussed, attention is attention and I want it all.

It’s less work for me. If you’re going to keep my name relevant, then by all means,
please do so. You’re only going to make people investigate and some of those people
will eventually become a supporter, once they see the good I bring.

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Use association to your advantage. Find accounts with a following and buddy up.
@RealDylanMadden has done a great job of this. He’s associated himself with
accounts like @EdLatimore & @AJA_Cortes.

These are self-help accounts - gurus of self-development. Not of the pseudo kind. But if
they turn out to be serial killers, don’t quote me and use this as an endorsement. Ha!

They teach people how to better their lives. Dylan was a nobody online and now he’s
gained a following just my cozying up to these guys.

He’s uses the quote tweet feature to his advantage. Quote tweets often get retweeted
by the original author. You’re helping them go viral. People like his added commentary
and may organically follow. Everyone wins!

By creating an association, you now have highly engage accounts retweeting you.
When these people get shout outs, Dylan is often mentioned in that group.

A great way to get close to an authority figure is to ask them really thought provoking
questions. Ideas that would be helpful to their following as well.

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Answering questions makes people feel important and plays on their ego. It’s a good
way to brown-nose.

Hotep Nation works much the same. By association, many people have used the Hotep
brand to grow their following. Some have done it selfishly and others have done it
honorably.

I don’t mind either way because this is a measure of our influence.

Within our circle, we all retweet each other. This creates a pool of like-followers.

The cool thing about this is the interaction aspect. When two people that you follow
interact via replies, you see them on the timeline. Otherwise, replies don’t appear on
your feed.
There’s a psychological aspect to this as well. People get to see two of their favorite
followers interact in a way that they wouldn’t normally see. It’s kind of like a behind the
scenes look. You can also use this to your advantage because people are ALWAYS
watching.

Find like-minded people and build with them. Promote their content and they will usually
return the favor. Collaborate on blogs, videos and live streams.

“If you want to go quickly go alone, if you want to go far go together." – African Proverb

There’s power in groups. That’s why I always find a way to be a part of one.

In the book “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, he calls it a “mastermind
alliance”.

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He defines it as, “A friendly alliance with two or more persons who will encourage one to
follow through with both plan and purpose.”

If you genuinely like the content someone is putting out, you should have no problems
giving it some promotion. This will naturally create camaraderie.

Refer back to my words on social proof to see the other advantages of joining forces.

Sometimes I’ll retweet someone and they’ll return the favor. Maybe out of generosity or
because I reminded them that I’m there and they perused my timeline.

Give to get.

Trolls

If you’re on the internet, chances are, you’ve dealt with or have witnessed trolls. They
serve one purpose. To distract you. Don’t let them win.

Usually, trolls are lonely people looking for attention. Don’t give them ANY and they will
go 10x harder. You can use this energy to your advantage. But usually, if you ignore
them long enough, they’ll go away.

The problem occurs when they start distracting your followers. That’s when you need to
block them. I’ve had a troll leech almost all of my tweets and pick fights with my
followers. When it became too much, I blocked him.

Don’t feed the trolls!

What do you do if you don’t block them? Retweet or quote retweet them.

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Why do I retweet them?

This goes back to the section on enemies. Trolls can appear to be enemies and
enemies make you look important. Also, it will increase morale and draw empathy from
your followers.

Many times your followers will defend you. If your followers are defending you, then
you’re doing something right. You’ve made a connection.

If you retweet them and your followers don’t defend you, then you haven’t made an
impact yet.

I love it when my followers pile on after my reply or retweet. My dissenters usually

complain about how passionate my following is by how they passionately defend me.

Dissenters try to turn my followers against me with comments like, “You’re just a
follower. He’s your boss/leader blah blah blah”.

I don’t see it like this at all. I see it as a noble gesture to defend me. I am often found
defending people in Hotep Nation. If you’re attacking them, you’re attacking me. Loyalty
over everything.

I never want to appear as if my supporters follow me blindly. I’m often called a “cult-
leader” which inspired the title of this book.

My response is, “If we’re a cult then we’re a cult that forces you to think for yourself.”

Sometimes I’ll respond to trolls, if I can make a funny example out of them. If I can use
them to create entertainment value for my followers it’s a win win. Their goal is to get
underneath your skin so never let them see you sweat.

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When you respond, it should be in jest. Make them look like a fool with sarcasm and
satire. I’m notorious for making trolls delete their tweets. Nobody likes looking stupid.

Ultimately, trolls get blocked. Like I said before, their main purpose is to distract. Block
out all distractions. If you can’t transmute their energy to go towards your cause, ignore
them.

Branding

I’m not sure what passes for the definition of branding these days but I’ll give you my
definition. Branding is what you do over and over again that people remember you for.

I wear a blue robe in my videos on purpose. People know me for it. Most people dress
up to make their videos, I dress down. I can’t count how many times someone
comments on my robe.

Sometimes I test how well I’m branding by removing the robe. I know I’m doing it right
because someone will ask, “where’s the robe?” Success! Now, that’s branding.

Branding could be a hand gesture, a sound you make, your hair, a particular hat, etc.
Find something to brand and be consistent.

Another way I brand is by letting people know my favorite food. I LOVE plantain. So,
when I fry some I’ll post a picture on my feed and give the lovely plant praise.

People start to know me for that and associate me with plantain. When you think of
plantain, think of me. This is also a subconscious mind hack.

To go off on a bit of a tangent here, I can show you how you can leverage marketing
dollars from multi-million dollar corporations.

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I used to go by the name Bawsten pronounced like the city Boston. Whenever someone
watches an MLB, NBA, NFL game and the Red Sox, Celtics, or Patriots play, I could
come to mind. That’s leveraging multi-million dollar brands.

As Daddy Bawsten the rapper, I sampled the voice from Dora the Explorer for a song.
Millions of dollars have gone into the that brand and I leveraged it.
I currently go by the online persona of Hotep Jesus. Remember when I said the people
will help you form your brand. Well, guess who gave me the name Hotep Jesus. A
dissenter.

I thought it had a ring to it so I used it. You can’t name a figure that’s been marketed or
promoted more than the avatar Jesus. That’s leveraging.

When you don’t have a large budget, find ways to leverage others’ who have a large
marketing budget. This is the same thinking that goes along with my previous
statements on piggybacking the trending topics.

Be where people already are. Be in conversation that they can relate to.

If you notice, you can grow a following with almost no budget. No ads. Everything I
showed you were organic approaches.

Imagine what I could come up with for a paid campaign!

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Author Background

Bryan Sharpe has been marketing for close to two decades in both the traditional and
digital spheres. As a writer and thought leader, Bryan has cultivated a loyal following on
social media by being honest and genuine while providing knowledge from experience.

He’s a natural teacher with a wealth of knowledge on a variety of subjects.

His mother is an accountant who retired from BASF, a Fortune 500 company and his
father is an ex-military officer who later became an accomplished electrician and
inspector, so he’s well rounded.

He’s most known for his work with Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson as the regional marketing
director for his incubator program.

In addition, he’s doing work in Sub-Saharan Africa, Tanzania, where he keeps in contact
with a translator on the ground and helps facilitate resources to children’s programs.

Bryan’s dream is a life of philanthropy. Follow his journey on Twitter @VibeHi and
retweet the best tweet you see on his timeline.

All of Bryan’s books will be published at BooksByBryan.com so check back in the future
for new releases.

Look out for future books on spirituality, the subconscious mind, psychology, marketing,
politics, economics and more.

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