 Hi, I'm Mitch Mitchell and I figured that before I went ahead and took my medication, which involves my pills, one of which I just dropped, and my insulin because I'm diabetic, I thought that I would talk about sharing, most specifically how I share on Twitter. You know, I talk all the time about engagement. Social media is supposed to be about engagement. And one of the things that helps with engagement is sharing other people's content. Now one of the strangest things about Twitter is that people aren't only sharing their own stuff. I mean there's a lot of people who are. I mean my goodness, there are people who 20 times an hour are sharing their own stuff. Buy this from me. Read this from me. Download my free report. Dah. Nah. Me. Me. Me. That's irritating. Buy other people's stuff only 20 times an hour. And you know, I sit back and I wonder, okay, what is your purpose for doing that? I mean, what are you trying to accomplish? Maybe every once in a while you might be slipping in something saying, hey, by the way, why are you looking at all this other stuff? Buy from me. But I don't stick around long enough to find out because that's just not helping at all. That really can't be helping. And it may look strange because those folks will have literally tens of thousands of people following them. And there's tens of thousands of people following them. But it's mainly bots. It's not real people. There are some real people mixed in there, but in general, there's this thing with the bots where they follow each other and then they just pump each other with the same stuff. And it's unbelievable. So if you're going to be a real person who wants to try to make some kind of difference in your own influence as well as helping to promote yourself because the best way to promote yourself is in helping to promote other people, then there should be some kind of balance. But I'm going to tell you how I actually share things on Twitter, my process for doing things, which is slightly different than what most everyone else does. Because one of the things I start off doing is I schedule my own posts. Now my posts are a combination of blog posts and videos and inspirational messages. And that's my stuff. I mean, I have my own inspirational messages. And then I will mix in inspirational messages from other people. For instance, one day last week, which was April 4th, which was the anniversary, 48th anniversary and assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I posted a motivational message from Dr. King every hour from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. But most of the time it's me talking about using one of my quotes. I don't tell anybody they're my quotes, by the way, but most people figure it out that it must be because I'm not naming who I'm quoting. So anyway, I start off with that. And I don't schedule it so that I have something going out every hour. I do for the first three hours of my day. So for instance, Mondays are 9.45. That's my start time. So 9.45, 10.45, 11.45. And then I basically move things around every two hours. And I like to schedule that in because now I know when I can schedule in stuff that I'm sharing for other people. And I do a combination. There are some things that I see on Twitter that I say, you know what, I'm just going to share this right now. This is just good stuff. So that's unscheduled. And I will just share that. And sometimes it's within minutes that someone else has posted it. It may even be hours sometimes, because if a message is really long, but I think it's really good, then there's no sense in me copying it and saving it for later. I'll just send it out then, and maybe I can make a comment on it because I like to make comments on other people's stuff every once in a while. So that's one way. But the other thing I do is I go through Tweet and which I talked about in a video a couple of weeks ago, or maybe it was last week, I can't really remember anymore. Anyway, I will go through that. And I have different columns. For instance, I have a column that I call friends I want to follow. And these are my, mainly these are my online friends who I've known them for some years. And I like a lot of stuff they put out. So they have their special column. Then I have the column that I call Syracuse folks. And you know, I'm living in Syracuse area, so those are my Syracuse peeps. I don't share tons of stuff from them unless it's related to, you know, Syracuse, university stuff, you know, Orangeman stuff. Otherwise, I don't really share a lot of that, but I will talk to those people. Then I have a column that I call people I want to follow. And this one here is kind of my living column, because there's a lot of people I'm connected to who I mix in here from time to time to see what kind of stuff they're putting out. Because I recognize, you know, I'm following something like 1200 people, which is not really a big number when compared to everyone else, except that I'm actually following these people. But I don't see all the stuff that they put out all the time. So I will put them in this column and then follow them for a while. And if they're sharing their own stuff or other people's stuff, and it's consistently good stuff that I like that I want to reshare, then they stay in the column. If it turns out that it's not their stuff, or they're not promoting themselves at all, or they're just overdoing it way too much, then they don't stay. And I replace them and I put someone else in there. So that's really my living list. And then I have the list that I call Black Twitter. Hey, you know what, some of y'all may not recognize this, I happen to be Black. And I'm of the opinion, and it's proven almost every day, that there's not enough Black people who are being talked about who happen to be on social media. So I have my Black Twitter. And just like my people I want to follow list, it's interchangeable. And you know, if someone is being kind of irritating the stuff I see, I take them out. If it doesn't look like they're actually ever sharing anything for anyone else, and it's just me, me, me, I take them out. But I mix in more people here and there. And that is an interesting column, because sometimes I'll put people in Black Twitter, I'm not even following, I'm not connected with at all. Just because I can. And then I have a general list that I call hashtag leadership. Because I'm very big on the topic of leadership. And so I have that column. And I had a hashtag blogging column for a while, but it was just way too much stuff. And a lot of it didn't even apply to blogging. So I said, okay, let's just scrap that one. So every once in a while I'll put it in there just temporarily, look at some stuff, and then I'm gone. And then of course there's the basic column, which is everyone I'm connected to, or even once in a while some people who are connected to me that I'm not connected to, they show up there. I don't know how that happens, but Twitter has their way of doing things. So anyway, I go ahead and I go through my columns in order, in that order that I just told you. And if I see that they're sharing something from someone else and it's a link to a webpage, I click on it. And I go to those articles. Now, I can speed read. Thank goodness for that because this might really drastically slow things down. But I look at every single article that I find interesting. And I look for two things. One, the first thing is if a pop-up comes up immediately, I'm out of there. I'm just totally out of there because I've talked about how much I hate pop-ups. And pop-ups specifically that don't let you look at any of the content before you get there. So there's that. There's some big name websites that I refuse to share their stuff. So I'm not sharing Forbes stuff anymore, and I'm not sharing INC or Inc. However you say that, I'm not sharing their stuff. And some other sites, I'm just not sharing their stuff anymore. So anyhow, I look at all that stuff. And if I like it, then I have my list that I create. And of course, it's another living list because I only share something once that someone puts up. So I put an RT, and then I copy the person who's sharing it because they deserve credit for finding it. And then what I do that's slightly different is if there is not a Twitter handle for the person who wrote the article, I go looking for it. And I like to add that because I like to give those people attribution for writing it. Now, if it's that person's blog, then I'm good because that's easy to find. But sometimes it's hard to find the person, their hashtag, their Twitter handle. It's sometimes hard to find it. If I can't find it, then I don't worry about it. But most of the times I like to share that because I'm a writer. I've got somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 articles online. And not all of them are in my name. I don't get credit for everything, although I get credit for a lot of it. So I know what it's like to have people basically taking credit for stuff you do. And yes, I've gotten paid for it, so I'm not griping about that. But these people aren't getting paid for it. These people who write on Medium or maybe write on Huffington Post or whatever, none of them are getting paid for it. And a lot of them think that they're getting a big bounce from writing on those sites, and they're really not. So I see it, I try to help them out, because this is what I do. So I do that for everybody, all the articles that I see. Sometimes if I'm on Flipboard, there's an article I'll see. I'll email that to me so that then I can do the exact same thing so I can find it. Because I think that's what engagement is all about. And then I schedule those things in between my posts for my blogs and my videos and my quotes. And I just schedule all that stuff in there. If they're sharing quotes because under the hashtag leadership, there's a lot of leadership quotes that are under there. And there's a lot of good stuff, so I will share that stuff. And if there's someone who happens to be alive, and that may sound strange, but you know what, a lot of the quotes are from people who aren't living anymore. So if they're sharing it from someone who's live and I happen to say, hey, maybe that person's on Twitter, I'll go look for them and then I will put their Twitter handle in there. And one of the things I've noticed when I do those kinds of things is one, those people see, hey, someone is acknowledging that I actually did the work and they like that. And I've talked to people on Twitter for doing that. Now, I follow almost nobody first. I just don't do it. But I will talk to people. And so I talk to people and if they decide, hey, I think this guy's kind of cool, I'm gonna connect with him, then I will look through the rest of their stream because just because they wrote a nice article on some website or some blog does not necessarily mean that they're sharing a lot of good stuff. So I don't follow everyone just because they follow me, which is how come my numbers are so low. So anyhow, that's kind of how I engage with people. I think it's fair to do. I think it's the right thing to do. And if I don't get it reciprocal, I don't care. I don't care. You know, you teach people how to treat you. And sometimes they learn the lesson and sometimes they don't. But I have found since I started doing this last year that I get a big benefit on Twitter. My traffic to my blogs from Twitter is just blown up. And I love that. I don't know how YouTube actually works. I don't know where most of that traffic comes from if I get most traffic. But you know what? I'm taking it for the blogs. I'm taking it for the website. I feel pretty good. Anyway, that's the process I do. If you have any further questions, ask me below. If you do something different, let me know. If you think that I'm overdoing it, let me know that as well. But I just wanted to share how I do that. So y'all take care. I hope you have a wonderful day.