Sean Gardner, the co-founder of the Huffington Post ‘Twitter Powerhouses Series’ and Forbes #1 social media influencer, shared his content strategy and social objectives in front of a packed crowd at Social Media World Forum this morning.

“Nobody does anything alone,” he told delegates. “I listen for people who use bridge terms.”

What are bridge terms? For Gardner, social media is like a bridge; every retweet, repin, every endosement are “the bricks that help construct the bridge to where you want to be.”

Bridge terms are words like ‘us’, ‘we’, which Gardner believes is vital in social communication and engagement.

“I sort of tune people out who are about ‘me’ and ‘my’,” he said. “It’s okay to say ‘I believe in this’, but when you really start to connect with the ‘we’, the ‘us’, doing things together, I think that’s when you start elevating the medium.”

Gardner’s social output speaks for itself. Almost 94,000 tweets; 632,000 Twitter followers; and over 25,000 favourites, even though he admitted he didn’t use that feature all that much.

Such a frequent amount of tweets – as well as cross-posting to different platforms – can lead to accusations of spamming and clogging news feeds. But as Gardner explained: “I like to say thank you to people. I like to let people know that I really appreciate what they’re doing.

“If you don’t want to follow me just unfollow me, it’s all good. I cross post because I like to build up other platforms.”

A case in point for Gardner was flipping between Twitter and Google+. A shortened link in a tweet goes to the same content on the Google+ page. “You’re giving value from two platforms to one,” he explained.

Gardner revealed his three pronged content strategy for Twitter:
– Inspiration – quotes and links on living your best life and being the best version of yourself
– Information – links on business, the environment, global affairs, multicultural outreach
– Aspiration – what’s achievable? The manifestion of the inspiration and information

The idea here is well-worn – keep things fresh, keep the quality level high – yet it was still fascinating to hear it from one of the best in the business.

Indeed, Gardner has been recognised on various occasions by the industry – although he was rather cool about the praise.

“Making the Forbes list was quite interesting,” he said. “It’s my understanding that the individual who put it together felt that he wanted to go beyond the usual names. He wanted to dig deep into the data – I’m not questioning it.

“If somebody wants to say ‘we appreciate the job you’re doing, and we believe you’re number one on Forbes, I’ll take it.”

All in all, the overall sense gained from Gardner’s talk was one of independence, sincerity and gratitude – a lot of the time, he’s done it his own way with a lot of hard work. “I don’t buy followers or fans – I think you can really do it if you put the work into it,” he said.

“People told me I couldn’t cross post,” he added. “My opinion: what if they were wrong?”

In other words – anything Gardner has been told, he’s usually done the opposite. And the figures and accolades speak for themselves.