For the first few years that I was on Twitter I had an ambiguous relationship with it. Whilst my commitment to this blog has remained pretty fixed for almost fifteen years now, my Twitter postings came and went. So too did my accumulation of followers vary in pace as a result.
Then, about a year ago I began to see Twitter as a mechanism to really extend the outreach of the ideas here. The videos seem to have helped this. When I began work on them I had about 55,000 followers. By September it was 60,000. As I noted on Monday, I hit 70,000 at the weekend. This morning that pace has accelerated. I have over 72,500 now.
The increases are almost invariably heavily linked to my publication of long Twitter threads. These are intended to be explanatory of economics. The same threads appear in this blog and never cause much of a circulation increase. But on Twitter they do.
It may be because they are unusual. Twitter allows ‘threads', which are strings of related lists that appear together when viewed. They are not uncommon. They usually allow someone to post a longer piece by listing it in parts. Few are more than a few tweets long. I use them differently.
First, I write in paragraphs that are never longer than 280 characters. The tweets in my threads are intended to be complete, in themselves. That can be quite challenging when writing, but I like the discipline.
Second, my threads can be long. The one on the economics of the national debt posted yesterday was more than 80 tweets long. That should not make it popular. An essay of well over 3,000 words is not the obvious thing to put on Twitter, and yet it works.
These are the stats for the first tweet in that thread:
That tweet has reached more than half a million people, although not all will have read it, of course.
Almost 70,000 people have, however, actively engaged with the tweet, with more than 5,000 liking it and more than 3,000 retweeting it, hence its reach, which is far greater than I alone could achieve.
And a lot more people are now following me, which when part of the aim of this blog is to be educational, is good news.
Oddly, the thread in question was written three weeks ago, on a Saturday morning. It took four hours to write. And when I had done it I felt the timing was not right and did not use it. I thought yesterday was the right time, and so checked it through again and then published it.
In contrast to the Twitter result, the version of that thread posted here was only the fifth best read page yesterday. It was read just over 500 times. Total blog reads were just over 10,000 yesterday. It's not hard to see why Twitter matters in my work right now.
But the question is, what to do with these threads? There are about five significant ones now. Should they be an ebook? Or a proper book? Or what? Thoughts would be welcome.
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‘That’ thread was so well written, easy to understand and engaging, I shared it on and off Twitter.
You could extend the reach of your expertise by getting involved in a grassroots political party, help formulate credible economic policy to build a better future. Just a thought.
Politicians have always suggested to me that would be the worst use of my time
“Politicians have always suggested to me that would be the worst use of my time”
My inner cynic wonders whether they say that to you to keep you out, knowing how much you might upset the cushty deal they’ve got going for themselves?
Then again, I don’t know which politicians said this to you, so I may be (and probably am) way off the mark…
I think not…they wanted advice….just as I have just been doing for some
At the risk of being too simple, I would suggest the forum where it can have the most impact amongst the most people. Especially those who believe the myths of ‘tax and spend’ and ‘Govts. are like households’.
It almost needs to be an advert. Something that someone sees in their everyday life. Some will ignore it (maybe most) but some may look at it and some of those may read it in its entirety. It’s getting it out to the widest possible audience.
Craig
Twitter is great for increased reach, but it can be an ephemeral medium. Capturing the threads here (as you are doing already) is a good start, and allows you to link to or to read the whole thing in one go. No doubt there will eventually be enough material for a book if that is what you want to do.
Carry on as you are, but when you have sufficient material and you feel your ideas are sufficiently developed a book may be appropriate. You have a unique take on MMT with your emphasis on the role of taxation and government bonds – that could be worth consolidating and promoting in book form.
I am thinking along those lines
ut also simpler ones …. intro material
Basic material is much harder to write
I don’t envy your need to engage on all and any platforms that are developed and used to feed propaganda to the masses. I hope you have willing and knowledgeable helpers who will always do so. It is essential to use the weapons of oppression against these who wield them as well as fight them with the weapons they don’t have.
I should maybe stop at that , but I haven’t done groaning, There is plenty today, so please forebear the following.
There is a need for education and ‘reprogramming’ of our ‘common sense’.
Most people are habituated, encouraged even, not to think through from first principles about the issues they are asked to have an opinion on.
Decisions which effect their daily lives and their lifetime.
They are too busy or too tired or can’t be bothered etc.
Such ‘don’t think’ just ‘do as you’re told’ mantra is parrot learned early, it used to be Ladybird Books, now it’s Children’s TV , the child minder that parents happily let their infants be groomed by!
It is way past time to stand up to these ancient ‘ruling classes’ and their reenforcing modern day fairytales of exceptionality- from Harry Potter to Costume dramas such as Downton Abbey , mere upgraded iterations of previous era proselytising sky fairy and divine rights to be rulers and basic lies of Money and Wealth.
Start with Fake Economics and it’s priests (Academia and weasel Politics) and missionaries (MSM);
Capitalism / Marxism included (created nearly two centuries ago as the Wizards in front of the curtain to divert with their Punch and Judy act);
Jack and the Beanstalk and it’s stable mates included.
And let’s finally after two generations of having debased ourselves, our grand parents sacrifices and our grandchildren’s security, having sold off our National Wealth so that we pay Hedge Funds in deepest USA a tribute for the fresh water that falls out of the sky above our own heads!
Let’s bury Maggies Handbag in a concrete tomb. Like some radioactive waste it certainly is.
They are already getting put together here:
https://threadreaderapp.com/user/RichardJMurphy
I know…
Not sure if you know, Richard but you’ve featured a fair bit on The Canary of late. You seem to be their de facto economist . You even get to feature on their Only Fools and Trojan Horses video this morning. Don’t know whether they’ve been switched on by twitter or whether you’ve reached them by other means.
I have not spoken to them…..
I don’t read it either, come to that
Hi Richard,
I have a suggestion re: your videos. I think you should hire/partner with a video graphics artist and introduce graphics to accompany your monologues. There are 7 learning styles, and your video output at the moment is obviously mostly tailored to people that prefer/are most proficient at auditory learning (not to say that you’re uneasy on the eye! 😉
Adding a visual graphics element – say pictures of BoE and The Treasury and graphical representations of the flow of money between them, size of national debt or issuance of bonds or whatnot – will increase your reach to include those with a more visual learning style and improve the… penetration? into the minds of auditory learners too. Not to mention appeal more to the younger generations with much shorter attention spans.
You could even produce short animated gifs to accompany the tweets in your epic threads to further reinforce the points being made.
There are three issues
One is cost, which would increase significantly
Two is time, likewise
And three is reward. I discussed this issue with a campaign I know and they said even when they spend a lot on videos they rarely get more views than I do. They actually wondered downgrading to my approach because they felt they were wasting money
Your ideas are nice – but in terms of bangs for bucks what I do probably works about as well as it can
Fair enough. Time for me to stop procrastinating and start such a channel myself then!