It began with a simple inspiration that led to a year and a half of serious fun: “What if Twitter had always existed?”
We started our blog at HistoricalTweets.com. No promotion. No marketing budget. Just posting content. Every day. For ten weeks.
Prominent bloggers found Historical Tweets and wrote about the site. Fans retweeted. Mainstream press began writing articles. We did radio interviews. History teachers began using our content in the classroom.
In January 2009, a popular tech blogger tweeted about us, leading to a nice spike in traffic of around 75,000 views. By May 2009, Time Magazine wrote a very positive online review. Then, over the 4th of July weekend, the social media magic happened.
CNN.com wrote an article about the funniest Web sites and included HistoricalTweets.com. It went to the top of Digg and then everyone (from friends to strangers to Ashton Kutcher) began forwarding links to their friends using social networks. July 2009 yielded 5 million site views.
In the weeks that followed, we signed with a literary agent, put together a book proposal, and chose Random House from the group of publishers that bid on the book.
We wrote the book in two months and it was on shelves at Barnes & Noble and Amazon in April 2010 – and then on the best-seller list – just 18 months after the original conversation.
It couldn’t have happened that quickly – if it ever happened at all – without social media.
[UPDATE: And now, a 2012 daily calendar. Coming Fall 2011.]
