How To: Not Suck At Writing Tweets

I never thought about this topic before this week when a friend of mine sent me an email asking me to teach her how to not suck at writing tweets. How can someone suck at writing a tweet? I looked at my fast moving stream of 23,000 people that I follow, and I studied the tweets as they passed by. I’ve since concluded that yes, some tweets definitely do suck.

How does a person learn how to write better tweets? After all, all we have on Twitter is text, so our reputation is built one tweet at a time. I’ve sent almost 20,000 tweets. That is enough text to write a book.

I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I’ve come up with six tips that you can follow which will definitely improve the quality of your tweets. I’m sure I’ve left some things off this list, so please leave them in a comment below.

Grammar
According to this fantastic article I saw in a tweet from @SharonHayes, The Secret Social Media Skill, “Just because Twitter is only 140 characters doesn’t mean that spelling, grammar, and clarity don’t matter. In fact, I’d argue they matter more because you’re communicating in such a compact package, and you’ve only a moment to make an impression (or break it).” This is not to say that every person has to be a master at vocabulary and spelling, it just means to be aware of it and pay attention to it. I make mistakes like this in my tweets all the time. Nobody is perfect, just try not to be sloppy, that’s all.

Learn The Lingo
You don’t have to be on Twitter long to realize that there is a whole Twitter language that is spoken, or written, in tweets. They are really just twists on the old text, IRC (remember that?) and IM acronyms with a little bit of Twitter sprinkled in. You can read about the popular ones here: Twitter Dictionary | 35 Twitter Abbreviations

Keep It Below 120 Characters
There is nothing that validates you as a good tweet writer more than being retweeted by your followers; however, if you make your tweets too long, nobody can RT you. Forget 140 characters, 120 characters is the new black on Twitter.

Double Check Your Links
This is huge. So many people send out tweets with broken links, don’t be one of them. Double check your links to make sure you have a solid tweet. This is very important. Your followers will roll their eyes and quickly let you know if you’ve skipped this step.

Do Not Curse
If your whole Twitter persona is wrapped up in being shocking and your followers expect you to curse, than this rule doesn’t apply. However, for all the rest of us, if you care about the quality of your tweets, don’t curse. It’s not attractive at all. It definitely lowers the quality of your tweets.

Take Two Seconds To Re-read Your Tweet Before Sending It.
It only takes two seconds to re-read your tweet before sending it. You can catch any obvious mistakes your brain or your fingers missed the first time around.

These are the same tips I gave my friend a few days ago and according to her, they have helped her become a better tweet writer. If you have struggled with this too, I hope in some small way, these tips help you also. :) Happy tweeting!

Thank you for the great photos!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whereiputstuff/3794382950/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9800389@N04/747251601/

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