The First Rule of Social Media: There are No Rules

There is no science of social media. This is what happens when you are working with a relatively new field, with changing technologies, new platforms, and different functionality added every few months.

We have tools that we know work.

There are methods that anecdotally produce results.

And there are case studies of what can lead to a disaster.

But most importantly, we have very few absolutes.

Recently someone who enjoys my fitness newsletter repurposed some of my thoughts as an original blog post. I was honored she did so and happy she found value in my content.

But one seemingly innocent, innocuous line stuck out to me:

I've probably spent hours on his site since I've discovered him. Although he sucks at Twitter (You're supposed 80% other people people's articles that you like and 20% of your own. Obviously he thinks he's awesome because he only shares his own.) But that's beside the point.

I wasn’t bothered by the criticism. I’m an ardent believer that criticism and failure is part of the path to greatness.

What was interesting is that she felt so strongly that the 80/20 rule was in fact a rule.

If you looked at measurable analytics of social media, you would think I did not suck at Twitter.

I’ve amassed an audience of 60,000 followers, less than 5% of which are bots. (Yes, you can see which one of your favorite Twitter superstars buy their audience. And no, you can't completely prevent these spam accounts.)

More importantly, I have a Twitter strategy, and it directly relates to the criticism of how I share content.

I'm not saying everything I do on Twitter works, but for my brands I know why I’m using Twitter. My primary goals: build trust and authority and drive traffic to my site.

I do it because it works. Over and over again.

Case in point, here’s a snapshot of my social referral traffic via Google Analytics for a 2-week period:

As you can see, my Twitter traffic led to 30% of the referral traffic (not total traffic) to my site. So it only makes sense that I leverage that audience.

Does that mean I don’t share other articles? Of course not.

Some of my biggest hits have been content, thoughts, and analyses that are not my own.

But because the results have clearly shown that sharing my own content does not hurt my Twitter presence (in terms of audience growth, retweets, content sharing, and traffic), then why would I change?

To farther prove the point, look at some of my SumAll stats for a 2-day period.

In one day alone (where I posted a viral topic on gaining muscle at any age), the retweet reach was a staggering 226,000 people.

Does that mean 226,000 people visited my site? No. But it did mean I expanded my reach beyond my normal audience, which resulted in nearly 10,000 new visitors to my site within one day.

What it means for you?

Your job is to test concepts on social media. Test, analyze, retest, and then draw conclusions.

You'll learn what works, and even try out theories proposed by others. But thinking there’s only one way to use a platform is a massive mistake, especially in a relatively new field where new "rules" can be created every day.

You should be fearless enough to experiment, smart enough to test, and savvy enough to measure and assess what is and isn’t working.

From there, draw your conclusions, build your strategies, and dominate.

But don’t think it will only happen by playing by someone else’s rules.