The Voyage to No. 100

My voyage to my 100th follower on Twitter earlier this week wasn’t quite as exciting as hitting No. 50, considering who No. 50 is. My 100th follower was Networking Nate, whose bio says “is a Master Networker interested in learning, sharing, developing relationships and making money!” Aren’t we all interested in making some money!!! Networking Nate’s e-mail address was for BNI, which boasts itself as “the world’s largest referral organization.” My wife is a member of BNI, and I know here in Richmond BNI has a large presence. When I was unemployed this summer, I went to a BNI breakfast two blocks away from my former employer. I can vouch for it being a good group – it’s helped my wife’s business quite a bit. (If I receive additional information on Nate, I’ll add it to the comments section.)

On my way to 100, Agency3 threated to pull a Style Weekly stunt to unfollow me and then follow me when I got to No. 99. Agency3 is, quite simply, a “Web guy” according to his Twitter profile. Agency3 led me to Mayne, who is “having a blast influencing trends, stirring interest and building brands.” I also came into contact with bysmarshall, who is the editor of the Amherst New Era-Progress and Nelson County Times (between Lynchburg and Charlottesville in Virginia) where I was editor a few years ago. He’s the replacement of the replacement who was my replacement. So he’s like my great-great co-worker, or something like that.

I’ve been too busy this week to focus on trying to get to No. 150 so quickly, but tomorrow is #followfriday … so here’s my selfish effort to start the big push now. Maybe I could even get to No. 200 by the end of the weekend.

No. 50 …

My Twitter experiment has blown up in my face. But the “free” publicity I promised will not stop just because of what happened on Friday. In my previous post, I described that my 50th follower (and 100th, 150th, etc.) would get mentioned on this blog as a reward to following me on Twitter. I also mentioned that I wouldn’t necessarily limit the publicity to just that specific number.

On my route to No. 50, I received some interesting comments and got involved in some unexpected conversations. Editor Kari told me she’d follow me twice if she could. Kari is the communities editor at the News & Messenger, which is the daily newspaper in Prince William County. As a former newspaper editor, I can certainly appreciate the want and need for publicity, especially in these tough times in the newspaper industry.

I also got wrapped up into a conversation with Aquiahouse on what ACLS could possibilty mean. American Cars Look Swanky? I’m not sure what that was all about, but Aquiahouse’s profile reads as follows: “Newspaper Training Director, Grammar Queen, AP Style Advocate. I love the Metro & read the Post w/a red pen.”

I exchanged a few messages with Style Weekly‘s Jason, who came in at No. 46 and wanted to follow four more times for that free publicity. I suggested unfollowing me when I hit No. 50 and then refollow me, but I’m sure I would’ve caught that. In the course of a half hour, Jason and I exchanged several messages, became friends on Facebook and discussed a few thoughts on who became my 50th follower. We were both a bit shocked when I revealed that No. 50 was Richmond.com.

For those who don’t know me, I have some history with Richmond.com. Once I get around to updating this site with writing clips, you’ll see that some of them come from Richmond.com. As far as giving RDC “free” publicity, I have a hard time figuring out what to do. You see, RDC is now owned by Media General, also a former employer of mine. I have no real blood between either, and the person who followed me from RDC even said she would unfollow me if I wanted. No need … it’s just that I don’t know what to say.

There are changes coming to Richmond.com in the coming weeks. They’ve even posted this on Twitter and on Facebook — I suggest checking those sites often to find out what’s happening.

I’ve enjoyed my journey on Twitter to the first 50 followers; I hope the next 50 is just as much fun.

Twee Twublicity & 100 Push-Ups

Twitter is changing the social networking world. As part of my early efforts to do some freelancing, I came up with an idea to utilize this blog for “free” publicity. So I am currently doing an experiment on Twitter to gain legitimate followers and follow people and/or companies that actually post things I’ll read. As a first part of this experiment, I want to have a blog post highlighting my 50th follower, my 100th follower, etc., etc. on Twitter. If I have an eruption of followers (which I’m not really counting on), I may have to scratch the “every 50 followers” plan and do something different.

I quickly found out yesterday that this free publicity attempt may prevent some people from following right away. “British Bulldog” wrote to me on Twitter and told me he was waiting to follow me on another account in hopes of getting that “free” publicity. Well, since he was straight-up honest with me on telling me he was holding off on following me on that other account, I told him that maybe I’d go ahead and give him some publicity anyway. He was the first one to acknowledge my attempt to increase followers by promoting myself on Twitter’s #followfriday. So, here’s what this free publicity is all about.

“British Bulldog” is actually Steve Speirs, an accomplished runner and the man behind the “100 Push-ups” craze that I discovered through reading other running blogs in the past year. (Have I mentioned my own running blog yet? See below.) Simply put, Steve developed a plan for anyone to do 100 consecutive push-ups following a seven-week training schedule. This plan will be available in a book in June. Instead of confusing you with linked words, here are some bullet points to find out more information.

• Steve’s personal Twitter profile can be found here.
• Follow “100 Push-Ups” on Twitter here.
• Click here to order the “100 Push-Ups” book.
• Start the plan now at http://hundredpushups.com/.
• And lastly, click here for my running blog and here to follow me on Twitter. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll get some free publicity as well.

For the record, I have not yet met Steve and only know him right now in the virtual setting. No, all runners don’t know each other. Besides, I’m a middle-of-the-packer and he’s super-fast. And I have not yet tried the 100 push-ups challenge.