10 HOT TOP PROVEN STRATEGIES & SECRETS HOW TO BE A TWITTER ELITE! ™ - Step 5

To recap, over the past 5 weeks I've introduced you to my 10 HOT TOP PROVEN STRATEGIES & SECRETS HOW TO BE A TWITTER ELITE! ™ system and shown you Step 1 (Never Tweet!), Step 2 (Follow No One!), Step 3 (Impersonate a Celebrity!), & Step 4 (Tweet in Japanese!) that can help you on your way towards becoming a hot, top Twitterer.

Each Tuesday, I work my tail off to provide you with some truly profound advice, and also with examples taken from the ranks of the Most Followed Twitter Users to scientifically back up my points.

So, here is the Proven Strategy & Secret to be a Top Twitterer #5

5) Get hired by the Disney Corporation. It helps if you can act, sing or dance. But you don't have to be very good at it.

Now, at first, this might seem counter-intuitive. "What are you talking about, Liz?", you say. "There are no children on Twitter. It's a social network for ADULTS." How very, very wrong you are.

Although Twitter's old Terms of User specified that users must be at least 14 years old (although it never asked users to verify their age), it's new TOU, updated on September 18, 2009, remove these cumbersome age restrictions. One of the Disney stars on the list below is 11 years old and another is only 9! Throw away notions of Disney carefully protecting its image, let's plunge with them into the exciting, adventurous world of "social media."

Now, along with talking about Twilight films & the Jonas Brothers, kids can participate with others & talk about #3wordsaftersex or #fatgirlremix trends or be followed by porn stars with "interesting" background profile photos. Cool, huh! And a natural place for the Disney Corporation to promote their artists. In business terms, we call it "synergy."

Scientific Proof? Look at these very popular, HOT, TOP Twitter accounts who have racked up hundreds, no, thousands of followers after getting signed to an acting or singing contract with the Disney Corporation:

@AshleyTisdale 2,235,993 Followers
@SelenaGomez 1,158,139 Followers
@DDLovato 1,103,361 Followers
@JonasBrothers 973,290 Followers
@EmilyOsment 391,696 Followers
@David_Henrie 372,015 Followers
@MitchelMusso 338,158 Followers
@BillyRayCyrus 316,889 Followers
@JakeTAustin 215,428 Followers
@MissNoieCyrus 152,831 Followers
@78Violet 147,963 Followers
@ComeAgainJen 146,763 Followers
@TheDebbyRyan 138,960 Followers
@TheRealTiffany 137,298 Followers
@JesseMcCartney 134,345 Followers
@CorbinBleu 109,551 Followers
@Brenda_Song 98,475 Followers
@ItsChelseaStaub 86,759 Followers
@DrewSeeley 69,411 Followers
@LucasTill 62,575 Followers
@JohnLloydTaylor 59,033 Followers
@GregGarbo 58,216 Followers
@AnnaMariaPdT 52,809 Followers

An all too common assumption that newcomers to Twitter have is that people who have the most interesting or newsworthy things to say (which they've gained through education or life experience) become the most popular people on the network. That is simply not true. Spend 10 minutes exploring the Most Followed Users on Twitter and that misconception is quickly dispelled. You can be 9 years old and have over 100,000 people interested in what YOU have to say.

"But," you ask, "I can't act or sing. I'm not young and I'm not White. Why would Disney hire me to star on its television shows or movies or record an album?" Well, yes, the truth is Step 5 is probably the most difficult step in the program to achieve to secure your place on the Top 1000 Twitterers List.

But, when it suits them, the Disney Corporation does overlook the fact that their stars might be over 25 (@BillyRayCyrus) or aren't Caucasian (@CorbinBleu, @Brenda_Song, @AnnaMariaPdT). Be one of those exceptions!

The best part of Step 5 is that you can be popular and keep your anonymity because adults won't know who you are. I found 3 times the number of people on this list who are also Disney actors & singers & have between than 50K-10K Followers but didn't make the cut for this list. Who are they? What do they do? Do they have talent? I don't know! It simply doesn't matter with Step 5. Just get that Disney contract and watch your Follower numbers soar!

Keep checking each Tuesday as I continue to reveal one of Hot Top Proven Strategies & Secrets On How To Be A Twitter Elite!™

Disclaimer: The Disney Corporation and its affiliates have no connection to this blog. No Disney characters were harmed in the writing of this post.

Tweens on Twitter?

Last week, The Jonas Brothers created a Twitter account at @JonasBrothers. At first, just a few announcements were posted to the account but the band members began talking with fans yesterday. Their followers reached 60,000 in less than a week and added another 6,000 since last night. They could easily reach 100,000 followers by the end of the week and could surpass Britney Spears (#2) & Ashton Kutcher (#3) in followers if they keep up this momentum.

The Jonas Brothers are huge among the Tween (8-13 years old) audience as well as some Teens. They were mobbed the outside of the Manhattan MTV offices during Jonas Brothers Week last year which I saw for myself when I tried to pass by. The band earned about $12 million in 2007 and in 2008 they were listed #9 on the richest pop acts of 2008 list making over sixty-two million dollars.

Twitter has experienced different waves of users: 1) the tech, early first adopters (2006-2007), 2) social media types, bloggers and some entrepreneurs (2007-2008), 3) marketing folks, companies & celebrities (2008-2009) [these are general trends, YMMV!]. But Teens have never showed much interest in Twitter, they seemed to prefer phone calls, texting and traditional instant messaging to a "micro-blogging" social network.

But the presence of Teen/Tween celebrities could change that aversion. Twitter offers the illusion of immediate and intimate contact with pop idols. Although people like Ashton Kutcher & Miley Cyrus don't follow many noncelebrities, they will selectively (like 1 out 10,000) respond to people's @replies to them. This possibility of direct contact is very seductive in our celebrity-oriented popular culture.

Whether young people will begin to flock to Twitter remains to be seen, it's been less than a day since @JonasBrothers has been active but when it was, Jonas-related topics were 4 of the top 10 trending topics on Twitter. But Miley Cyrus has been Tweeting for less than 3 weeks and already has 253,318 Followers while Demetria Lovato (@ddlovato), another Disney celebrity, has 133,832 Followers. I can only see this growing as Tween fans are extremely devoted audiences.

The larger question to most of us is how an influx of younger users would change the atmosphere on Twitter. Twitter's Terms of Use insist that people creating new accounts be at least 13 years old but Twitter's execs have been shown to be very hands off in terms of regulating user behavior beyond suspending the most obvious spam accounts. I think they will either end up ignoring this new user base or changing the TOU.

I don't see a whole lot of cross-over between the Tween/Teen crowd and Adult users of Twitter. Older users are primarily involved in Twitter as a form of expression & interaction with others like themselves, as entertainment or to create business connections. There are a few enterprising teenagers who have large adult followings but that is in spite of their young age, not because of it.

My other guess is that--in my foggy memory--kids like to talk to other teenagers about each other so you might see more of them adopting protected status for their updates. This would give them control over who to allow into their conversational circle and allay parental fears about creepy people on the network engaging their children.

What do you think?