Social Media

6 Ways To Make The Most Of Twitter’s 140 Characters

Twitter bird

(Updated) Artists from Trent Reznor to Amanda Palmer and Imogen Heap have shown the power of Twitter for fostering and monetizing a more direct relationship between artists and fans. Many startups also use Twitter effectively to spread their massage.  But getting your point across in 140 characters or less isn't always easy. Here are 5 Ways To Make The Most Of Twitter's 140 Characters:
  1. Substitute letters and symbols for words: "Will I C U @ 2morrow's gig?"
  2. Remove unneeded words: "The band just finished in the studio.  We really love the new songs. They rock."
  3. Use links to draw fans to other content, but shorten URLs using bit.ly or other free tools.
  4. Forget what your English teacher told you and use only one or no spaces at the end of sentences. 
  5. Use contractions like "I'm" or "I'll".
  6. Don't forget that you're talking to your friends. They know who the Tweet came from and so there is no need to type out your full name.  "I" or "we" are shorter and more personal

Twitter-black

You can follow Hypebot on Twitter @ twitter.com/hypebot and let me know how well I'm doing keeping things short and sweet.

Bruce Houghton on 09/22/2009 in Social Media | Permalink | Comments (9)
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9 Comments

  1. You’re awesome and all, but your twitter is just a re-typed RSS feed. All you do is post headlines from the site, so it’s not like you could be held to the same standards as artists with news and fan interaction.

  2. Justin, I don’t think hypebot is trying to be that. The rss makes it consistent for people who EITHER follow the twiiter feed or the rss subscription. Doesn’t make it any less informative and helpful. That CONSISTENCY is important in the purpose of hypebot.

  3. Thansk to Justin and Cy for your comments. It’s true that I have viewed the Twitter feed as an alternative or mobile RSS. More recently I’ve been adding a bit of extra Tweet only content, alerts, questions to readers, etc. These are interesting times…

  4. Eh…understand the push to shorten things, but something rubs me wrong about bad spelling/grammar. Beyond that, if you wanna look at it from a monetary perspective, I know a lot of my fans wouldn’t appreciate if I started writing like a 10 year old texter.

  5. My sentiments are the same as Joe E’s: length restrictions are no excuse for poor language. I already despair at the quality of written English (and Polish), on the Net or otherwise. I’d rather post several updates than reduce them to a code, just so I can get them down to 140 characters.
    Besides, I think style does matter.

  6. Twitter is really creating a trend that English teachers and grammarians around the world would cringe at. Talk about hacking up everything they have been trying to teach over the centuries. Imagine if we continue down this path. We are creating a alternative language. Crazy times.

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