Almost half a century ago, tony watch and bauble manufacturer Cartier launched the cross-lingual Les Must De Cartier line of “new luxury” products and international boutiques to back them up. A “Les Must” was an expensive bijouterie item which any trust fund 20-something or millionaire industrialist wife just simply “Must” have, and the article in French was there to indicate that the product was obligatory for stepping out of your chauffeured 1969 Citroen DS limousine at La Tour d’Argent to enjoy the Canard a la presse (while trying to keep the visions of Donald Duck falling into a wine press out of your head). The concept of Les Must as a necessity for the elite has a new incarnation in the social media century as the indispensable “Twitter Musts” which separate the crème de la crème of tweeters from the vast unwashed masses of commoner proletweeteans.

Strive to Create Art that Impacts the Emotions

The first Twitter Les Must has to be the style that you implement into your tweets. As the Cartier gentry will tell you (if they invite you to their parties aboard their mega-yachts moored at the Monte Carlo Marina), style is everything! Therefore, your tweets must incorporate that style in being headline-y, condensed and compelling. While the Twitter Plebeians will blather on cranking out somniferous posts that engage only insomniacs, the Twitter Patricians produce sheer poetry that stops readers in their tracks as much as a resonant Haiku by one of the four great masters: Basho, Buson, Issa and Shiki. Getting your point across in 140 characters is an art form and like any art it must impact the emotions as much as the mind. Given that the Twitter Nobility is so far above mercantilism that they can’t even remember what it was like, their tweets are not tepid, pedantic, monotonous and pedestrian exhortations to “buy this” or “click here” but expressions of the spirit of a brand, insights into a lifestyle and nuggets of wisdom that make a vivid impact on the reader.

Matchless Distinction Takes Time, Thought & Skill

The integration of uniqueness and exclusivity are another Twitter Must. Anyone can buy a cabinet at Ikea and then spend the weekend blistering their hands by cranking on those infuriating little allen keys, but there is only one 18th century Badminton Cabinet and it recently sold for $36 million. In order to reach these stratospheric heights, you must consider your tweets as suitable to be placed within the Sotheby’s range rather than the Ikea one. Can you muster a 140 character tweet that is so impactful and idiomatic that it will become an identifying element of your entire branding effort? Is it going to go viral due to its striking essence as a précis of your whole brand in just a handful of words? The elite tweet is a capsule synopsis that compacts the complete aura of your brand in a highly concentrated number of keystrokes. This level of matchless distinction is only achieved through a sui generis enactment that takes extensive time, thought and skill.

The Only Acceptable Crudité Is an Heirloom Carrot in White Truffle Butter

The old money super-rich live within a firmly entrenched code of etiquette Musts which will not be breached under any circumstances, and the Twitter Musts incorporate their own very particular set of rules which can never be broken. Tweeters must participate in the community they are a part of just like the jet set is obligated to attend British retail billionaire Philip Green’s beach parties in the Maldives. This includes participating in chats, retweeting others with a fervor approaching religiosity and maintaining a consistent frequency so that your readers can rely upon you. It is difficult to imagine French billionaire art collector Bernard Arnault letting loose with a stream of expletives, thus the Twitter aristocrat also shuns any off-color verbiage in their posts, as the only acceptable crudité is a heirloom purple carrot dipped in white truffle butter.

As for the tweeters who do not possess the panache to master Les Musts and therefore claim their rightful place among the twitterati: “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!” (Let them eat cake!)