dizzysoft software

I consider myself a Twitter noobie (although I did tweet a couple months before Oprah) but over that time I’ve noticed some things about what makes a good tweet. Perhaps this is a rant. I know I don’t always follow these rules either. I just want to encourage good tweeting practices.

Remember, a tweet is not a text message. I know many people, like me, send tweets by text message, but I think we should think about them differently. A tweet is a broadcast to a wide audience of followers while a text message is to a particular person. This fact draws a couple conclusions:

1. Don’t use cute text abbreviations in your tweets- what makes Twitter fun and unique is concisely formulating your Tweets to fit into the 140 character limit. Although text abbreviations are helpful when sending and SMS, when it comes to tweeting they are cheating.
2. Tweet in complete sentences- I am following you but not always paying attention (although this might be hard to believe). When I scan over the hundreds of people I follow, to see what they are doing, I want to understand what’s going on, not have more questions. Frankly I won’t bother to take the time to think about what you mean. Respect me, as your follower, and make it a complete sentence.
3. Give me a context in your tweet- I am following you because I am interested in you and what you are doing. When I get a message that simply answers someone else, “yes,” it doesn’t satisfy the reason for me following you. I will have no idea what you are responding in the affirmative to unless I happen to also be following the person you are replying to. Rather than giving me a one-word answer, I am interested in the context, “Yes I do like Courtney’s BBQ.” Now I don’t have to guess and have learned an important fact about your likes and dislikes. I might have an opinion and add something to the conversation- which is the whole point of Twitter, isn’t it. If you don’t want to share your opinion with the world, you should have just sent a direct message in response.