8 LET’S PLAY A GAME

In business, war, economics, and politics, “game theory” uses mathematical formulas to analyze strategies in competitive situations, where one player’s actions depend on those of another. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, game theory is “the analysis of a situation involving conflicting interests (as in business or military strategy) in terms of gains and losses among opposing players.” Game theory uses mathematical formulas to predict the payoffs and develop strategies accordingly.

It is much easier to explain what situations game theory covers by first explaining what it does not cover. Game theory does not predict outcomes that depend on only one person’s actions. For example, let’s say Bob told Ann that he would give her fifty dollars to learn the alphabet in Spanish and recite it to him within a week. The only thing standing in Ann’s way of getting the fifty dollars from Bob is her own commitment and ability to learn the alphabet in Spanish within the given amount of time. Therefore, the only factor to consider in predicting the possible payoffs is Ann’s performance.

Game theory covers situations where there are multiple players and clear payoffs, and each player’s payoff depends on the strategies of 
the others. One of the basic assumptions is that all players in the game are responsible and rational. This is partly why games involving single players are irrelevant: the payoff is simply determined by their actions—can they do it or not?

Game theory is divided into two categories: noncooperative game theory and cooperative game theory.

EXAMPLES OF A NONCOOPERATIVE GAME THEORY SITUATION

A common game that is analyzed in game theory is “the prisoner’s dilemma.” This involves two players who are both captured, and each of them has to decide whether they are going to give information that will incriminate the other prisoner or keep silent without knowing what the other prisoner will do. If one incriminates the other, that prisoner can go free and the other prisoner goes to jail. If one keeps silent and the other person gives them up, the first one goes to jail and the other prisoner is set free. If they both keep silent, they could get equal or smaller sentences. Or they could each give the other one up, and both would lose. What should they do? Game theory calls this a noncooperative situation, where each of the players is unable to communicate with the other players during the game.

The possible payoffs in the prisoner’s dilemma can look like this: If A and B betray each other, each of them serves two years in prison. If A betrays B, but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve three years in prison (and vice versa). If A and B both remain silent, each of them will serve only one year in prison (on the lesser charge). In the game, the rational choice for both prisoners would be to turn the other one in. However, in reality, humans tend toward cooperative behavior, which means that they are more likely to try working together than to act in purely rational self-interest.

A REAL-LIFE PRISONER’S DILEMMA

Let’s pretend that you rented a house through Airbnb. The host (the person you rented from) neglected to tell you that they live on the property, and it turns out that they will be there during your stay. You want to complain, yet you don’t want a negative review on your profile. What are your options? You could complain to Airbnb and receive a discount on your stay, which would leave a negative review on the host’s profile, or you could ignore the situation and stay silent. At the same time that you are upset with the host for not disclosing that they would be living on the property with you, the host is upset with you because you did not mention that you smoke. (It bothers them, even though you only smoke outside). They could say something to Airbnb and take money from your security deposit, which would leave you with a negative review, or they could ignore it and say nothing at all. If you both complain to Airbnb, then you both receive a negative review and no additional benefit.

A few of the possible options are reflected in the table opposite. The rational choice would be to complain and try to get a discount. The best outcome (payoff) for both parties would result from choosing to say nothing at all. You might say nothing and leave a negative review anyway, but so could the other person.

In a shared economy, we are often faced with the prisoner’s dilemma. Uber allows riders to rate drivers and vice versa, but neither party can see what the other says about them. When we complain to companies that offer a shared service, there is a possibility that while we receive a refund or credit, the other person receives retribution.

Prisoner’s Delimma Scenarios

The purpose of noncooperative game theory is to predict the other person’s strategy in order to win a payoff. In the example above, the payoff would be to gain financial reimbursement with no negative review (Outcome B, Guest), or to reach what is called the Nash equilibrium (named for John Forbes Nash Jr., the subject of the film A Beautiful Mind). The Nash equilibrium is the concept that “I have nothing to gain by leaving a negative review, and the other person has nothing to gain by leaving a negative review; therefore, I can assume that neither of us will leave a negative review because that is the best possible outcome.” Players are in Nash equilibrium when they each choose the strategy that gives them the best possible payoff, given that the other player is not going to change their strategy. This is the theory that can explain why we have not yet had a nuclear war (because there would be no winner).

The concept behind noncooperative game theory is that it requires competition between individual players. There is nothing within the game itself to enforce cooperation, and no player can affect the outcome by changing their own strategy. This explains why it is in every player’s interest to choose the strategy with the best solution. Compromise comes into play when there is something to lose but nothing to gain, which is what allows the compromise to occur.

COOPERATIVE GAME THEORY

In game theory, a cooperative game includes multiple players working together toward the same goal, with the possibility that external factors (such as legal contracts) are forcing the collaboration.

Let’s say you have what is called a coalition, or a group of players in a cooperative game. Within each game, every player contributes to the task differently; thus all of the gains or costs for the group should be divided according to the value that each player adds. This is called the Shapley value. This divided approach to groups could be as simple as a group of students working on a project together or as complex as a group of scientists working to solve global warming.

The main goal of the Shapley value is to decide who gets what, what is fair, and how to determine this. For instance, does the CEO add more value than the executive assistant, and how should those differences be awarded? The Shapley value breaks out these ideas into four axioms, or mathematical rules, which are important to understand.

1. Marginal contribution: Each player’s value is determined by what is gained or lost by removing them from the game. In other words, if we are working together at a company where our job is to make sales calls, and when you take a day off we make three hundred fewer calls, then your value is three hundred calls, because that is what we lost.

2. Interchangeable players: This rule states that anyone who could be exchanged for another player with no clear loss to the other players is considered interchangeable. Think of two people who have the same role in a company. In theory, they should be paid the same amount of money and be required to contribute the same amount of work.

3. Contribute nothing; receive nothing: This rule is based on what each person puts into the work and how much they should get back. This only matters in situations when someone could potentially contribute but does not. It excludes instances when the group has already decided what they would give to a member who cannot contribute, such as when people go on medical leave at work. Those people cannot contribute but they get paid, which is very different from not contributing when they could have.

4. Cost or payment based on the various parts: The cost and reward should be based on the part of the day that the work actually took place—or should have taken place but did not. For instance, if you worked with someone for six hours on Wednesday, you should both be paid for the six hours. But if you worked three hours on Thursday and your co-worker worked six, then you should be paid for three and he or she should be paid for six.

All of these rules for cooperation can be used to create fair partnerships and teams. They can also help you identify opportunities for developing your personal brand within an organization.

GAME THEORY IN PERSONAL BRAND STRATEGY: MY JOURNEY TO A MILLION-PLUS FOLLOWERS

When I first started to build my following online, I knew that it would take a long time and many hours to develop an audience. My first approach was to look for ways to achieve my goals more quickly and efficiently than others. I decided to use game theory and informational social influence to build my following.

I began by looking at the verified accounts on Twitter. The sign of verification is a blue check mark next to a name, which Twitter gives to an account to verify that people are who they say they are. The original point of Twitter’s verification was to help people identify celebrities, news organizations, media, publishers, reporters, and others who can easily be impersonated. Until late 2016, getting verified on Twitter was somewhat of a mystery. Though it started out as a way to identify public figures and media, it came to be a symbol of elite status. When we look at social media from a noncooperative (competitive) game theory perspective, we can see the number of followers and the blue check marks as a way to identify who is important and who is ahead in the game.

From an informational-social-influence perspective, the blue check mark can be seen as an identifier of authority, like social media accounts with many followers. What I needed was to gain more followers with a lot of followers or followers who were verified on Twitter, while working to get myself verified by Twitter, too.

The main thing to consider is that game theory assumes most of us will choose to play by the rules established by Twitter and society, even though these rules are not enforced. With game theory, we assume that most people would allow the check mark for public figures, and they would take the proper steps to become qualified for verification. We assume that the average person will follow the rules for gaining followers. We also assume that those who have many followers do not follow many people and that those without followers only follow people whom they know, have heard of, or want to hear from.

We can also assume that the owners of verified accounts believe that they possess special knowledge about Twitter and identify themselves as authorities. This suggests that they may not play by the same rules as people with accounts that are not verified.

Here’s another way to look at it. Twitter is built on the assumption that every person (player in the game) will connect with people they know and follow or connect with others based on their postings and how they perceive the content (or because they are celebrities). Twitter will then suggest other accounts to follow based on the types of accounts people currently follow, communicate with, or have a shared interest in.

The first thing I needed to do was to gain trust, and in order to do so, I needed to identify the following trust signals:

≫ Reliability (being consistent)

≫ Effective feedback (responding to people)

≫ Credibility (having a recommendation, such as a verified account or more than one million followers, including influential followers)

Next, I needed to identify the centers of influence—the most influential accounts on the subjects of digital marketing and social media. If I wanted to be the central thought leader for digital marketing, I would need to be connected (linked) to the most influential accounts.

Finally, I needed a schedule strategy that increased trust signals to my audience—not a schedule for posting but a schedule for communicating. At this point, I had seen many people posting schedule strategies that weren’t getting accounts to the level I envisioned for mine, which was to have a hyperengaged and hyperfocused following.

I decided that the best way to create trust signals was to set up a Twitter chat to create a conversation. Twitter chats can be used for many different industries and topics. For example, I have subsequently done this for clients in the health care, insurance, and publishing industries. A Twitter chat tells your followers that you are available to communicate with them once or twice per week (or whatever your schedule allows).

Now I needed to find out, Where is the central group of people who would be interested in my topic? I did some research to learn where the majority of people who care about social media and digital marketing live. I confirmed that London, San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles were the cities where the interest was concentrated. Then I chose a time to host the Twitter chat that suited all time zones, to ensure that anyone in those areas could attend. I went with 12 noon, Pacific Standard Time (3 p.m. in New York and 8 p.m. in London), and I hosted the chat on a Tuesday.

In order for the Twitter chat to work, I needed a hashtag for people to join. The hashtag would create a separate feed within Twitter, similar to having my own channel. I chose to be referred to as “The Social Media Girl” and used the hashtag #TheSMGirl. (Yes, I realize that the initials could allude to something else, but I think that helped the traffic and added a bit of humor when unsuspecting people attended.)

With the hashtag #TheSMGirl, I scheduled a chat every Tuesday about social media and digital marketing news. I would send out the topic every Monday, and on Tuesday I would prepare five to ten questions around the topic. I used the chat hour to pose these questions to the audience, and they would answer them. During the chats, I would learn things I didn’t know and answer whatever I did know.

I sent my Twitter chat to Twitter chat directories (websites that keep calendars of Twitter chats) so that people could easily find and join my chat.

My first Twitter chat looked like this.

Tweet number one: My #TheSMGirl Twitter chat starts in one hour today, Tues. at 12 p.m. PT! Today’s topic is “How to use Facebook groups for community building.”

Tweet number two: My #TheSMGirl Twitter chat is starting now! Today’s topic: “How to use Facebook groups for community building.”

The chat would appear in the form of the questions below. I would use Q1 for the first question, Q2 for the next one, and so on. People would use A1 for the first answer (and so on) to keep track of their responses. I would always include my hashtag, #TheSMGirl, to keep the chat in a separate feed on Twitter. I would also space the questions out by five to ten minutes, to give people a chance to answer and participate in real time. Here is an example.

Q1: What are some ways that Facebook groups can help drive community? #TheSMGirl

Q2: What are some ways that you can get people to join your Facebook community from other sites? #TheSMGirl

Q3: What are some of your favorite Facebook groups, and what makes them unique? #TheSMGirl

Whenever someone answered a chat question, I would immediately add them to a Twitter list that I created and titled “TheSMGirl chat.” If they were already on the Twitter list, I would respond by saying “Welcome back, [Name] #TheSMGirl” so that they would appreciate the response, feel involved, and come back. If they were not on a list, I would add them and then welcome them to the chat.

Many people who responded would not include the hashtag in their response. I would message them and say, “Thank you for joining the chat. Please use the hashtag #TheSMGirl in your responses so that everyone can follow along.”

During the Twitter chats, I would solicit engagement from the accounts that I had identified earlier as centers of influence. The idea was that they would have no choice but to respond if several people in the chat were engaged in the pursuit of their response. Once they responded, I would be connected via conversation in Twitter, which would increase my trust signals to their followers and to Twitter.

I have created a digital manual for those of you who want to create your own Twitter chats. You can find it at: cynthialive.com/platform. The Twitter chat digital manual includes a how-to, chat directories, and tools.

What did the Twitter chat do for my brand? Twitter is not just about having followers, it is about having the right kind of followers so that you can influence certain vertical markets, or specific industries—in my case, digital marketing. When I hosted the Twitter chats, people responded repeatedly using digital marketing keywords. Bloggers would write about the chats afterward and hyperlink back to my Twitter profile. This told Twitter and Google that all of these people had come to me for advice on digital marketing.

I would then urge people to subscribe to my Twitter list, “The Social Media Girl.” The more people who subscribed, the more trusted the list became. Even if people weren’t following me on Twitter, if they had engaged with me and I had added them to the list, they were closely linked to me because the subscribers of the list confirmed its value.

By repeating this process, I became a suggested person to follow on Twitter, by Twitter, for anyone looking for advice on digital marketing. By facilitating the conversation, I became an authority on the topic. For an example of how effective it was to focus my content and host the Twitter chat, take a look at the following influencer studies.

In December 2016, Inc. magazine published an article backed by original research and titled “The Influencers That Digital Marketers Are Following on Twitter.” I was number twelve, sandwiched between Seth Godin (number eleven) and Guy Kawasaki (number thirteen).

In September 2017, Onalytica released a study showing the most influential people in the following topic areas:

Social Media

Sales

Analytics and Data

Video

B2B (business-to-business marketing)

Writing

Influencer Marketing

Agency (marketing agency)

Lead Generation (finding new business leads via digital marketing and the internet)

Content Strategy (bringing more people to your website by creating better content)

The study identified the top twenty-five influencers in each category. In social media, I was the twenty-second most influential; in video, I was third; in writing, I was twelfth; in influencer marketing, I came in at twentieth; in agency, I came in at eighth; in content strategy, I was twenty-fourth.

In July 2017, research company Tenfold released a study naming the one hundred most influential marketers. I was number eight, following people such as Gary Vaynerchuk (number one) and Tim Ferris (number three) but before Seth Godin (number sixteen).

I am telling you this because I just started my journey to become an influencer in October 2014. Since then, I have managed to become a leading voice in digital marketing, grow my following to more than a million, become an international speaker, and write for various publications. Did I know what I was talking about? Yes. Am I different from anyone else who has a job in a niche market? No, I’m not.

I grew my followers and my notoriety by studying the algorithms, understanding the rules, and at the same time breaking the rules. I used a Twitter chat to focus my message and draw the right kind of audience. I also used the Twitter chat to captivate the audience I was targeting.

I am a growth hacker. Or, more accurately, I have a friend who is a growth hacker and a very good one. We decided on the type of account I wanted and worked strategically to make it happen. This is how we did it.

I told my friend what kind of audience I wanted, and he created lists of these audiences. I would follow these people based on certain keywords. If I engaged with them, I added them to a Twitter list and never unfollowed them. If I never engaged with them, I eventually unfollowed them. Then I used my Twitter chat to create plenty of opportunities to engage with this audience.

WHAT GAME THEORY HAS TO DO WITH THIS

One of the concepts of cooperative game theory is the value of each player. This means the total value created by the player being in the game (in this case, my being in the game) minus the total value created if the player were not in the game. The more accounts I connected to and the more conversations I started, the more valuable my account became to the overall game.

Another concept I applied from game theory is known as signaling theory. Instead of telling people I am valuable or sending a lot of promotional tweets, I signaled that I was valuable by becoming a hub for communication around a specific topic. When I held the chats, the people who cared could come and everyone could network. Every single account that engaged with my Twitter chat increased my credibility and helped convey that I was someone worth following.

When applying this to Twitter or any other social media growth and personal brand awareness, you have to be objective about yourself. Instead of asking, What will I gain if I have a lot of followers? ask yourself, What will others lose if they were to stop following me?

When I asked this question, I realized early on (as many of you will) that I needed to be able to add strategic value to anyone who followed me. I started the Twitter chat because I knew as soon as I started following people and they could see a community surrounding my Twitter profile, my own value would be equal to or greater than the value that each participating account perceived in the community around me. This is the argument for having a complete strategy around growth hacking that includes community and 
the value of its individual members, rather than pursuing growth for growth’s sake. This is how you become an influencer and build a brand—by knowing that your true value is only as strong as the community you build, the perceived benefit for its members, and the opportunity for them to influence that network.

Designing Accelerated Growth

As I started to grow followers, I was averaging twenty-five hundred to five thousand each month before I received the blue verification check mark from Twitter. That was when my strategy had to change a bit. I had literally followed all the digital marketers, and whoever was going to follow me was probably already doing so. My next goal was to figure out a different strategy for getting more digital marketers, executives, and entrepreneurs to follow me. (I added entrepreneurs and executives to my target demographic because I was trying to bring in work for our digital marketing agency.)

In game theory and economics, there is a field called mechanism design that runs counter to most of the other concepts in game theory (but with the same assumption that all players in the game will act rationally). With mechanism design, the game is reverse-engineered, so you can use this approach to create the game structure itself, instead of playing a game that already has the rules in place.

In my situation, I used mechanism design (with the help of my growth-hacker friend) to choose Twitter accounts that had the followers I wanted, and to look at why they were following that person or account. For example, I wanted more followers who were concerned with data and information because these areas play a big role in digital marketing. So I would find the accounts that had the most followers who were chief information officers. By connecting with these accounts, I gained credibility in the eyes of their followers, which improved the odds that they would follow me back. (I am now the most followed person by chief information officers on Twitter.) We worked in reverse to determine the center of influence for a particular demographic, create a strategy to engage the center 
of influence, and then use that engagement as a trust signal to their followers. Later I would follow them, with the assumption that they would now be more likely to follow me back.

When we combine this type of reverse engineering with game theory, we end up at the intersection of computer science and game theory known as algorithmic mechanism design. This subfield combines elements of economics, theoretical computer science, and game theory to give us algorithms.

According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary: “Algorithms by definition are a procedure for solving a mathematical problem (as of finding the greatest common divisor) in a finite number of steps that frequently involves repetition of an operation; broadly: a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or accomplishing some end especially by a computer.”

How Do Algorithms Work?

Algorithms are designed to operate by a set of simple rules:

≫ Each step of an algorithm must be clearly defined.

≫ An algorithm has an end. When it has completed all of the steps it was programmed to complete, the algorithm ends. So essentially algorithms work in a loop.

≫ Algorithms act on inputs and outputs. Once the rules are set by defining the expected or possible input, their next moves are based on clearly defined responses. (When A happens, B will always respond to it.)

When using reverse engineering to gain more followers on Twitter and other social media websites and search engines, we need to understand their algorithms. We know that every action that occurs on a social network that is not produced by a human is an action produced by an algorithm. This means that the network’s responses to human actions are predetermined.

Since algorithms are built on a loop, every unique action from a human will receive the same unique reaction by the algorithm. If we can define the algorithm’s outputs (actions taken by Twitter’s algorithm) by specific human actions, we can then perform the actions we know will elicit our desired responses to create a strategy that benefits us.

Your Twitter account is only as valuable to potential Twitter followers as they perceive your most valuable Twitter follower. So you can look at your followers (I use SocialRank) and pull out the most valuable ones by category. Then you can narrow their followers down to a category—let’s say digital marketing—and you can assume that a large percentage of your most valuable followers’ followers will follow you back if you follow them. Why? They assume that you must be worth following if an account they value is following you.

For example, if Barack Obama’s Twitter account followed your Twitter account, you could assume that 50 percent or more of his active Twitter followers would follow you just because he follows you.

If your Twitter account follows another Twitter account that is unaware of you, then you are increasing the chances of their seeing your account. Many people refuse to follow other accounts on Twitter because they want their follower ratios (the number of followers you have versus the number of people you are following) to make them look famous. This is why many people prefer to have a much higher percentage of followers than accounts they are following.

Most of us are not famous. Well, maybe you are, but the rest of us have to stop treating Twitter and other social media sites the same way that famous people often do and start playing by our own rules to achieve our goals. Stop trying to be famous and start trying to connect with people. Following an account is the easiest way to get in front of your target audience.

Six degrees of separation is actually only 4.67 degrees on Twitter. You’ve probably heard the expression six degrees of separation, or “six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” as it’s often referred to in the cultural zeitgeist. This is the idea that everyone is at most six people away from connection to anyone else on the planet. This theory suggests that if I gave you a letter to give to someone you didn’t know in another country, it would take a chain of only six people to deliver the letter to that person.

On Twitter, this number is less than six. In 2010, social media data company Sysomos conducted a study to find out how many degrees of separation every Twitter user was from all other users. The company studied 5.2 billion Twitter friendships (someone is following your account and you are following their account back). The results? Everyone on Twitter is only about 5 degrees of separation away from each other. If you are on Twitter and Bob Saget is on Twitter, then you are just about five friendships away from being Twitter friends with Bob Saget. This is known as your friendship distance. In theory, we can connect with anyone on Twitter by combining strategies.

In their study, Sysomos tested the reach of every Twitter account’s network. They found that if you visit the profile of every Twitter friend of five people, on average you will encounter 83 percent of all Twitter users. If you visit the profiles of all of the friends of friends of six people, the average jumps to encountering 96 percent of all Twitter users.

What this means is that you don’t have to put in too much effort to reach a massive amount of Twitter users. This study was done in 2010, and of course the algorithm, number of Twitter followers, and statistics have changed by now. But for better or worse, they haven’t changed drastically, so the message still stands: follow the network and reach a lot of people. On Facebook, there are even fewer degrees of separation.

Having the blue verification check mark on Twitter matters. When you are growing your Twitter followers by growth hacking, it is important to understand that people will follow back verified accounts more often than they will follow back accounts that are not verified. And verified accounts will follow other verified accounts. Also note, in following and unfollowing accounts, that the number of accounts you can follow is important. If you are not verified, you can follow a thousand accounts per day. When you are verified, that number is closer to twenty thousand accounts per day, or twenty times your follow limit—a huge increase in people following back.

These days, you can submit your Twitter account to become verified. Twitter allows and encourages people and brands to submit for verification. By going to verification.twitter.com/welcome. Back in the day (2013 to 2016), you had only two options. Option one was to have a registered Twitter advertising account and use the link verification.twitter.com. (Technically, we’ve always had the ability to apply for verification; we just didn’t know it.) But this approach was difficult because there were only a couple of reliable ways to get verified: either to have an email address at a major news company or publication, or to have published music on iTunes. Those guys always got verified.

Option two was the approach I used. When I first submitted to be verified, I was denied. This actually dinged me, making it more difficult to get verified. So I convinced someone at the Twitter office to verify me on Christmas Day. (Yes, the day when no one is paying attention because they are with family and friends.) It was the best Christmas gift ever.

Once my growth-hacker friend and I knew some of the algorithmic intentions and human elements of the game, we created a plan. Our plan was built on conversation (Twitter chat), follower lists, the blue verification check mark, and our goals. Now we were ready to reverse engineer my Twitter profile. (If you’re interested in growth hacking on social media, I recommend checking out Fanbase to help build your following. They’re the best.)

Some of what my friend and I came up with was incredible. We followed the active Twitter followers of my most valuable followers. We went with active members because we knew that they were, well, active on Twitter. We targeted people who we thought were likely to retweet based on how many retweets they had given similar topics. We followed and engaged with brands and celebrity profiles that had high follow-back ratios so that we could then target their fans. It was amazing.

The rule for gaining more than a million followers (now going on two million) is similar to what I imagine is the rule for becoming ultrawealthy: you have to know the rules so well that you can break them—not just for gain but in order to start to be rewarded by the system in place. When we growth hacked Twitter, we knew the rules so well that we understood after a certain point the algorithm and its loop would eventually start to reward us by suggesting us in feeds, suggesting whom to follow, and increasing views of our tweets.

My accountant told me a memorable story that applies to understanding how to build your brand and grow your audience: “When I drive to work every day, there is a bridge with a toll on my way. If I drive over the bridge and choose not to pay the toll, that is tax evasion. If I choose to find a new route to work, that is tax avoidance, which is completely legal.”

The rules set by Twitter are not in the user’s favor. They want you to pay the toll to get to a million followers. However, if you find a new way to get there, then you are still playing the game they created and you will be rewarded.

CASE STUDY: HOW I GOT THE LOS ANGELES DODGERS TO FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER

In the summer of 2014, I went to a baseball game at Dodger Stadium with my fiancé and friends. The game was the Los Angeles Dodgers playing the Philadelphia Phillies. My fiancé, as well as my best friend and many of our friends are Phillies fans; I was the only Dodgers fan in the group.

In an effort to throw effective jabs at their team, I looked up interesting facts about the Phillies. What I found was an amazing tweetstorm. As I was tweeting with fans and nonfans, my younger brother saw my tweets and texted me about them. At the time, he was a sophomore at the University of Reno, Nevada, which does not have a baseball team (nor does Las Vegas, where we grew up). Although most of our family was born in the Los Angeles area and we still have family here, my brother had decided not to become a fan of Los Angeles sports teams.

Below is my first tweet from the game that my brother saw, followed by the response from the Dodgers:

After that tweet went out, my brother texted me and started talking trash about the Dodgers. As a fan, I could not let this continue. I immediately saw the opportunity to turn this into a game. I decided to leverage my brother to get the Dodgers to follow me on Twitter, and I sent the team the following tweet

My brother (@jpeazy10) immediately returned to texting me. I was his most valuable follower in those days, and he needed me to follow him so that he could gain more influential followers. By that time, I had about twenty-five thousand followers.

When my brother begged me not to unfollow him, I saw it as another play in the game. I took a screenshot of the texts that showed him begging me not to unfollow him, and I went back on Twitter to send the following tweet:

As you can see from the tweet, things were really heating up. I didn’t know whether the Dodgers would follow me, and neither did my brother. Minutes later, the Dodgers followed me on Twitter. Victory was mine, and my brother lost his most credible follower. I wrote a celebratory tweet and then unfollowed my brother.