The other day I heard a stat that made me whistle. On average, the 32 million people on Twitter, apparently spend 2.5 hours “tweeting” a day.

So I whistled. Then I tweeted.

I fired up my Twitter account, which I had actually secured on March 2nd. Hmm, just a bit of a delay. Especially in digital dog years. I changed my user name to something I liked. In minutes I had 9 followers. In a matter of hours it was 13. And  then I tweeted.

For about six hours.

Then Tweety Bird died. He just ran out of gas.  He didn’t get it. I mean I’m a fan of social media. And I like doing a blog every week. But why do I need to provide 138-word reports on every meeting, every phone call, and every email I send. Some of my emails aren’t even 138 words themselves.

Now I know the world is all a-twitter over this. And I get the attraction of being able to send short shout-outs to people. But why Twit when you can send an email? Why Twit when you can blab on Facebook? Why Twit when you can talk?

Guess I will find out. I’m going to try to stick with it. Thirty-two million can’t be wrong.

But if you want to make money off of this, how do you do it? How do you get people tweeting about your brand? About your attraction? About your event?

Remember the most fundamental principle. It’s called “Social” media for a reason. It’s to socialize.

Who are the best socializers? Those with something to say. Those with some content. Those with a story.

As I discovered yesterday. Sometimes a good old-fashioned workday isn’t that exciting. Sure I enjoy my work. But it’s a bit of standup, sit-down, write notes, move to the next room. Reminds me of high school in a way. So do some of the people!

Social media is at its most powerful when we provide content. Either someone makes that content or someone follows it. Why else do you think that sports websites are so popular? There is something to socialize about!

I’m back to my experiment. You can find me on Twitter if you like. I’m “MarkHarrison3″.

Hope to not disappoint!
Okay so I tried.