Twitter: so much to say, so little space - how can you possibly fit everything into a mere 140 characters? Ah, well that's the challenge, and the gratification. Constructing a tweet seems simple to some, from an unfamiliar high level. However, for people who specifically choose every single character they share, and want every word to count, it's more of a purposeful task.
With that said, there is a thought process, or at least there should be, when constructing a tweet. What point are you trying to make? Are you attempting to stir up a conversation? Supply information? Simply vent? I've heard from too many people that they don't understand Twitter, saying, What's the point? I have nothing to say. I applaud those people for not tweeting just for the sake of tweeting, telling the world they had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. Some people use Twitter just as a listening tool, a place to aggregate their news and other interests. That's fine.
There are different types of tweets, as I noted. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that about 50% of my tweets revolve around sports, whether it's sharing an article, talking about a game, fantasy football related, and/or interacting with others in the sports realm. Makes sense, as sports journalism is not only my background but I'm a sports fanatic by nature. Since entering Corporate America a few years ago, maybe 30% of my tweets provide information about my industry, mostly revolving around social media news, tips, quotes, etc. The remaining 20% is probably divided into equal parts tweeting at brands/companies and leaving room for some random thoughts and of course inspiring wisdom.
I have a friend in Miami who entered the Twitterverse quite early, as I did. We were both covering the Marlins as sports journalists at the time. To this day we still message each other, in awe, whenever people misuse and/or overuse hashtags. Here are some tips:
- If you have more than two hashtags in a tweet, it's excessive - pending the circumstance, three tops. Also, I go back to my point of constructing a tweet, as we always made an effort to insert the desired hashtag, which is normally the topic of focus, natively into the tweet as part of the conversation.
- Another note that should hopefully be common knowledge for avid Twitter-users: if you begin a tweet with "@" only that person and overlapping followers will see that tweet. On the flipside, many people think that adding a "." before the "@" is simply just lazy.
- When I share articles, usually the title is automatically generated via the share widget, along with the link. I like to add my commentary to the post and this always is a battle with characters. Trust me when I say that I spend the extra 30 seconds to manipulate the words in a way where I do not have to use short hand or poor grammar. I cringe when I see people use a number instead of a letter or shorten a three letter word such as "you" to "u" - yes, others actually pay attention to this; I'm certainly not the only one.
I understand that the rules are indeed bent when it comes to Twitter. They darn-near almost broke when the huge journalism and blogging rush joined the platform around 2010 as people focused on speed and breaking stories rather than facts, correct punctuation and grammar. However, I feel humankind has bounced back to figuring out what is important, and realizing there are ways to get your point across effectively yet correctly. At least, I'd like to hope so.