Make it Stick

E-book:  Make it Stick

Author:  Charles Miller

What you get:  2 books

Price: $29 (Basic)  $45 (upgrade)


First Impressions: The basic edition of this book is an amazing resource for what it is and I learned a lot; not just about twitter formatting but what kind of content sticks and how to capitalize on it.

Review:

The Pillars of Twitter

Make it Stick isn’t just here’s how to format and the vague “provide value” That’s easy. I’ve read a lot about that. Truthfully, if you’re just starting out, that’s not going to help either. This book however, gives you concrete concepts to help standout and grow.

Right from the start, you’ll read about different kind of persuasion or appeals:

– Ethics
-Emotion
-Logic

You’ll learn about topics that “ignite” such as:

– Money
-Romance
– Parenting

It is about mass appeal in a complex way that leads the audience to engage.

It is interesting because this is a more emotional and psychological breakdown that just saying “hey, this beats an algorithm” or here’s what people want to read. This book taps into a deeper root of understanding which I can appreciate and I think you will too once you read it. You will even learn how to structure the tweet. It’s almost foolproof. One thing I like is that Charles talks about using smaller words. No one wants to pull up a Thesaurus to decode tweets.

In all my writing and reviewing I find that most people write at a high school level; right around 10th grade. That tends to be because we write how we talk. I think Charles means that. Keep it simple. Tweet how you want to write. It will endear yourself to the audience.

Charles suggests we deal in absolute so avoid “probably” or “generally” Make it black and white, left and right. Make it two sides and people will pick a side. Either way, it’s engaging.  He says to use strong words. In literature, these are called loaded words. Words that invoke a meaning or purpose. He gives examples of these such as:

“A real man prefers femine women. No exceptions.”

You will either agree with that or you’ll take issue with that. Either way, you are more likely to engage. However, that does not mean that only inflamatory language is useful. That could be a double edge sword as the book goes onto explain some topics that should be avoided.

Imagery is another good thing to have, adding pictures or Gifs will help draw eyes to your content. He goes also give examples and pictures of tweets that engage and his thoughts on them.  Overall, make connections and play nice with others. That’s not too hard, right?  If you’re still stuck, he gives more content ideas but ultimately leaves everything up to you.

Now that we covered setting up our tweets and our style, Charles wants us to get one thousand followers!

ONE THOUSAND FOLLOWERS

If you have read other “Twitter Starter Guides” This is pretty much that but I feel goes into better detail. Other books that I have read treat this as a primer and kind of gloss over it. This is a more detailed primer of what to do and how to do it. We learned to get people to engage with us and this is the opposite.

1. Good profile, bio and header

2. How to DM larger accounts.

3. Quotes and ReTweets.

To me, those are the stand out sections. Yes, sections. Charles breaks those down into topics. You’ll be able to go back and find them easily rather than scroll through pages to find them.

The biggest take away I got from this is networking. Tweeting is all about making friends with bigger accounts and helping out smaller accounts. Charles has you covered on this front.

Overall Thoughts:  I enjoyed reading about the Pillars of persuasion. I feel that has some real usefulness and value. While this book doesn’t exactly cover what I consider first steps to twitter (bio and profile creation) it IS a great second step. This is all about tweeting and interacting without the use of blanket catch all terms that leaves the reader scratching their heads.

I’m a big fan of this. This is a great resource if you’re just starting out to pair with about ebook; it’s complimentary value is outstanding and its stand alone value is solid enough to warrant its purchase.

Final Rating:   5/5