The Godfather’s Secret to Building Your Platform on Twitter

I love Tumblr, I love Twitter. I love talking with people I find interesting about stuff I find interesting, and the Internet is a great way to do that. —John Green (@realjohngreen), author of The Fault of Our Stars

Twitter fascinates me because it’s real. It feels kind of unreal, but it makes very real things happen. —Amanda Palmer (@AmandaPalmer)

Listen to this audio lesson:

The word Cartel means, “An agreement among competitors.” Competitors. There’s an interesting word for writers, for storytellers.

We call ourself Story Cartel because we could choose to compete against each other. We could see the world and all of its readers like a big pie to be divided up into regions and territories, genres and publishing houses. Or we could do something radical, rebellious even. We could form a Cartel, a guild, an agreement, and together we could bake a much bigger pie.

Photo by Martin Thomas

Cartels, like Platforms, are all about trust. If you’re generous with the Cartel, the Cartel will be generous with you. But if you betray the Cartel? Well, go watch The Godfather and find out…

Most of the Great Writers Had Cartels

I’m fascinated by Cartel based thinking because when I look back at the great writers of history, nearly all of them had their own Cartel.

J.R.R. Tolkien had The Inklings, his group of Oxford intellectuals that included C.S. Lewis who would meet at the pub, sip beer, and read their stories aloud.

Virginia Woolf had the Bloomsbury Group, a tightly knit group (they were famous for sleeping around with each other) that included E.M. Forrester and John Maynard Kenyes (the most influential economist of the 20th century).

Ernest Hemingway had his Paris expatriates, the group so enthusiasticly portrayed in Midnight In Paris. When he met James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, he wrote in his journal that they were writers who “could help a young writer up the rungs of a career.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, also in that group, helped inspire Hemingway’s first novel, breakout bestseller The Sun Also Rises.

Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Jack Kerouac, these great writers all had Cartels. Their Cartels inspired them and helped them establish their careers. Their Cartels, in many ways, were their platforms.

Now, It’s Your Turn

It’s time for you to start building your Cartel. You need a group of other artists who will support you. You need a group of people who will share your writing with their friends, who will recommend new books to you, who will critique your writing, who will tell you the truth. You need a Cartel.

And one of the best tools to start building your Cartel is Twitter. Why? Because Twitter is short and public. Twitter is a cocktail party. You can discover another writer’s personality and ideas. You can easily approach anyone on Twitter to start a conversation.

Twitter is more than a networking tool. It’s a relationship building tool.

I chose the quote from Amanda Palmer above because I think it shows a surprising side of Twitter. You think it’s unreal, all about followers and retweets and clicks. Then you discover it’s about something much deeper than that. It’s about influence.

The Secret To Building a Cartel

Speaking of The Godfather, have you ever seen it? If not, what’s wrong with you. Go watch that movie. In fact, go watch the first two because if you do, you’ll discover the secret to influence.

Vito Corleone isn’t the Godfather because people are afraid of him (although they are). He’s the Godfather because he does favors. In other words, he’s generous. The secret of influence is generosity.

So if you want people to read your tweets, read theirs. If you want people to retweet you, retweet them. If you want to get followers, follow others. As Jesus said, if you want to be great, first become a servant.