I rarely meet a Twitter user who doesn’t want more followers. A few argue that the numbers aren’t important. They are only concerned with “quality followers.” I’m not sure it is either/or, but I notice that most of the people making this argument have very few followers.

Why would you want more followers? Three reasons:

1. More followers provide social authority. Like any other ranking system, the higher your follower count, the more people assume you are an expert—or at least someone interesting. It may not be valid, but it’s the way it works in a world where there is a ranked list for everything.

If you are serious about building a platform, you must be actively engaged in social media. Whether it is Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+—or all four—you need to develop a tribe of loyal followers and super fans who want to hear what you have to say.

But who has the time? Social media can become a full-time job if you are not careful! And this leaves little time for doing your real job, whether it is writing, composing, programming, or doing something else.

This post is a 20-minute guide to Twitter for non-techies. If you don’t know what Twitter is, start with my first post on the topic, Twitter-dee, Twitter-dum. If you still aren’t convinced it’s worth your time, then read my 12 Reasons to Start Twittering.

Over the last few years, I have helped several friends and a few family members get setup on Twitter. I found myself explaining the basics over and over again, so I decided to write a simple, step-by-step guide.

Twitter can be a fantastic tool for promoting your book. But I see very, very few authors and publishers doing this well. They post some random tweets with no singular call to action and then wonder why their return on investment was so low.

Instead, Twitter can be a key marketing tool for driving sales and the bestseller lists. I have participated in both. BUT this only works if you take Twitter into account early enough in the product design and marketing process.

Last weekend, I determined that my Twitter direct message inbox was unmanageable. I was inundated with spam and requests from people I didn’t know. As a result, I decided to declare Twitter bankruptcy, unfollow everyone, and start over. I wrote about it earlier this week.

I had thought about doing this for months, but was nervous about the unintended consequences. However, after learning that Chris Brogan, Spence Smith, and Vicky Beeching had done the same thing and lived to tell about it, I decided to go for it.

Soon after I joined Twitter, I began auto-following everyone who followed me. I did it as a courtesy, so that it would make it easy for my followers to send me a private or direct message. I engaged in many one-on-one conversations that way, because I believed they were irrelevant to my other followers.

However, I have since changed my philosophy, choosing to reply publicly to most Twitter mentions. Why? Because the only people who see these replies are people who follow both me and the sender. In other words, only the people for whom the message might be relevant.

Turney Stevens is the dean of Lipscomb University’s College of Business in Nashville, Tennessee. Recently, he interviewed me on his program, “Conversations with the Dean.” We talked about the future of printed books, e-books, leadership, personal branding, and a few other topics.

More specifically, Dean Stevens asked me the following seventeen questions:

I recognize that all that I have—including my platform—is a gift. I am a steward not an owner. As a result, I enjoy using what I have for the benefit of others. I want to be helpful and generous.

But, no, I won’t retweet you.

This is a technical post for power users who want to setup a vanity URL shortener for HootSuite. Admittedly, it is off-topic for most of my readers. This is something I wanted to do, and it turned into a bigger project than I anticipated. So I thought I would document my experience and post it for posterity.Hopefully, it will save others some grief.

As you may know, a URL shortener is a way to take long Web site addresses and shorten it to a fraction of its size. This makes it much easier to share links via Twitter and other social media services where you have a limited number of characters to work with.

As you may know, Donald Miller is the author of the bestseller, Blue Like Jazz. A few years ago, he and a few friends decided they wanted to make a movie based on the book. (Don wrote about this process in his most recent book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.)

They developed a great script, recruited a stellar cast, and then began the arduous process of raising the money to shoot the film. But soon after they started, the Great Recession hit. Investors got nervous, making the fund-raising process even more difficult than usual.

Whether you like it or not, people are talking about you, your brand, or your organization online. Right now. Do you know what they are saying? Do you like what they are saying?

As I have outlined previously, one important component of a social media strategy is building an “outpost.” This is a sort of intelligence agency or “listening station” that allows you to monitor online conversations. Anytime someone says anything about my company—or me—online, I know within minutes.

So you’ve spent more time than you should designing and tweaking your blog. (Don’t ask me how I know this.) You’ve got it just like you want it. For now. But what about your Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube pages? Are you content to upload your photo and be done with it? Or do you want a more consistent brand image, one that ties it all together?

A few weeks ago, I uploaded a new profile photo to Twitter. However, that didn’t change my profile background. It still included my old headshot and a design done a few years ago by Matt Clark at TweetPages.com. I decided to visit his page again, and see what his company had to offer. Boy, was I surprised.

I often hear authors complain about how “frontlist driven” the book publishing business has become. Frontlist is the term used to describe new book releases—those in the last twelve months or even the current season. In contrast, backlist is the term used to refer to books that are older than that—basically, anything that is not new.

While backlist sales account for 50–60 percent of all the books sold, they typically don’t get a lot of attention. The reading public and the book-selling industry tend to focus on what is “new and notable,” rather than what is “tried and true.”

This morning as I was running, I listened to Episode 99 of the Catalyst Podcast. It was an interview that Brad Lomenick did with Charlene Li, author of the new book, Open Leadership.

One thing in particular grabbed my attention. Brad asked her what has changed in the last two to three years in terms of social media. She said,

Last April, I spoke at the Christian Leadership Alliance’s Annual Conference in San Diego, California. I spoke to the CEOs in attendance on the topic of “Social Media and Your Ministry.”

On Wednesday, I made a presentation at Catalyst West on the subject of “Platform: What It Is, Why You Need It, and How to Build It.” When I finished, I opened my presentation for Q&A. Finally, after about 20 minutes of lively discussion, I indicated that we had time for one more question. Someone asked, “How does a busy CEO—someone like you—find time for social media?”

Sometimes when I speak with marketing executives about social media, they seem to get it. But they don’t. Not really. They falsely believe that Twitter and Facebook are like every other broadcast channel. They see it as an opportunity to blast their message out to thousands of followers—for free!—and sell them stuff.

I find myself increasingly speaking on the topic of social media. I’m not a guru or an expert, by any means. I am just a practitioner who is learning through trial and error.

Many people admit to me that they are drowning in information. “How do you keep up?” they ask. “Between email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and, and the constant stream of news, I am overwhelmed. I don’t know what is important and what is trivial.”

Twitter is a great tool for extending your influence. You can engage your “tribe” in real time, offering leadership and assistance in a way that would have been impossible just a couple of years ago.