Writing a Tweet: A Lesson for Novice and Experienced, Alike

Writing a Tweet: It’s harder than you'd expect The art of content promotion is one that many view as an afterthought. This topic has been covered in many other blog posts on our site (e.g. The Kingdom of Content Is Advanced Only By Its Followers and Content Marketing: Are you content with your marketing efforts?), but very often the concepts are discussed and not the actual prescription; a concrete example. Until this morning when this lovely infographic made its way into the twitter feed that I was perusing. Gerry Moran at Marketingthink.com gave every novice Twitter enthusiast, not just an idea, but he gave a formula (which, after reading some other comments on similar blogs, was/is much needed).

“With only 140 characters in play, it seems pretty simple to write the perfect tweet! How hard can it really be when all you need is a few words to get your point across to your followers? Unfortunately, that is what many marketers and their management think how it works.” - Gerry Moran from Marketingthink.com Crafting the Content After reading Gerry Moran’s blog post How to Write the Perfect Tweet, a few things stand out:

1. Amplify Your Message: which is essentially what you are doing by using Twitter as your loudspeaker.
2. Motivate the Audience: whether it is through humor, a call to action, or simply just a “[Check this out]” each has its place and use.
3. Be Interesting: this is important, the way the tweet comes across to others is the only impression you will make in this 140 characters. Ask a friend how it sounds before you send it out (believe me, it helps).

  Inserting Links and #Hashtags Once the content of what you want to say is hashed out the logistics of compiling the information becomes the chore. Everyone has seen the links to articles shrunk down to help fit more into a tweet. The most popular tools to do this are:

1. Bitly.com
2. Ow.ly (as seen by anyone that uses Hootsuite)
3. Tinyurl.com
4. Shrinkthislink.com

These tools are free and rather easy to use. Each one works the same, but each represents itself differently. First you copy the link that you want shrunk, then you click the button to shrink it and you have a shorter link that can give you back valuable Twitter composing real estate. #Hashtags are ways for people to easily search for things that are being discussed. In a presentation, the speaker can give a hashtag, like #WebServesSocial, and the attendees can tweet with that hashtag and then after the meeting is over the speaker, the attendees, and those who could not attend can see the interactions and further interact with one another. The hashtag is not always just a funny endnote as it seems many personal twitter accounts have made it a way to make a joke, e.g. #CaseoftheMondays. Hashtags are tools to mine information from the massive information and data glut that is Twitter. Examples This is the one part that is always left out, and for the novice Twitter enthusiast it is the most important.

1. [New Blog] Examples for the #Novice Twitter Enthusiast: Concrete examples of tweets https://tinyurl.com/cg3lspu (this tweet left 34 extra space for Retweeters (RT’s)
2. Our New Product is here! Look at the specs of the all new #widget https://tinyurl.com/cg3lspu (this tweet left 43 open characters so that people can comment or reply)
3. An example from our own twitter feed is (BTW follow us @WebServes):

While each of these examples represents a different type of tweet and a different format, the last one is more advanced. The “RT” means that I am ReTweeting the content, but I am also commenting on it outside of the quotes. The last example exemplifies the original idea that some “blank space” needs to be present in the original tweet so that others have a chance to comment. Social Media is inherently social, so enable the conversation in any way possible. Empowerment The novice twitter enthusiast need not be intimidated by the Twitter world. It is a platform to promote, learn and express thoughts to a wide audience. Sometimes a speaker stumbles on words in real life, but it is a sign of a good speaker to roll with it and keep moving along. Everyone has goofed up a Twitter post, and the good ones learn from that and continue on. Happy tweeting! ~Josef