What makes a good tweet? Part 1

OK, I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as "The ultimate tweet". Someone will probably Google that and prove me wrong but until they do, the best way to work out how to tweet well is sometimes by looking at times when someone tweets poorly. We learn from our mistakes

So sit back, get comfortable and check out Carol's Hall of Shame (you mawkish little ghouls)

We'll start off with an easy one


Be interesting
Just been out for a great meal

Yeah, I'm real happy for you but your tweet is about as useful as a chocolate teapot and significantly less interesting. If you must tell everyone about your night out then tell them properly Why was it such a great meal? - Where did you go? Who were you with? What did you eat?

Whenever possible give your followers somewhere to go or something to look at. How about including a link to the restaurant's website or Facebook page? (the owners may even thank you for that). Failing that, what about a photo of that hilarious moment when the flaming sambuca torched the waiter's moustache?


Don’t make them work for it

@MacXXXX check my tweets for an event worth RT'ing guys. All profits going to @macmillancancer

This is basically asking people to go trawling back through the writer's tweets for some unspecified nugget of information.  No-one has the time to do that kind of detective work. Make it easy for your followers - put the important stuff up front every time.

And here's another from the mystery meat department

I posted a new photo to Facebook fb.me/12345678nZj

Someone has posted a photo on Facebook (bet that was hard to guess) but not bothered to give the image a caption. They have their Facebook account set up to cross-post to Twitter and - in the absence of a caption - you're seeing the default text that Facebook uses for the tweet.

My usual reaction to this kind of tweet is not gleefully rushing over to Facebook to see this photographic wonder. I'm more likely to mutter "well goody for you!" and ignore it.

But then I'm more curmudgeonly than most.

However, I 'm not unique - c'mon people, tell me WHY I should be doing this for you, or don't act surprised when I do nothing at all.

And they say size doesn't count...

Doing a stand up comedy night for Macmillan Cancer Support. You can get tickets here t.co/123456 Please RT + add your favourite joke

Nothing wrong with this surely? It does what it says on the tin, provides a call to action with the link and even gets imaginative by engaging readers with their favourite jokes.

There's only one wee problem - this tweet is exactly 132 characters. In a retweet this leaves just enough space to add "RT @..." and your username for the credit. So unless your reader's favourite joke is about one character long, he's pretty much screwed without having to edit your original tweet. A lot of tweeters don't like doing that.

Do your retweeters a favour - leave them some space to comment.



So, to recap

• Make it interesting, be of value
• Give your followers something to do or to look at (that they will be interested in)
• Make responding easy for them

And finally here's a link to an audacious example of getting it right - more of those next time

http://twitpic.com/9qm78v

12 ways to get more Twitter followers

Photo : cc by-nc-nd - Bruno Monginoux - Landscape-Photo.net

Having persuaded colleagues that Twitter can be a useful tool, inevitably the next question is "How do I get more followers?"

From personal experience, I generally recommend a combination of lurking, not being afraid to experiment until you find something that works for you and strict adherence to Wheaton's Law 

However there are some specific things you can do to improve your chances of getting more followers.

Above all, remember that there are many different ways for people to find and follow you on Twitter - they may see a #FF recommendation and read your bio, they may see a retweet of one of your posts and go read your feed. So you need to treat every publicly-visible thing about yourself as one of those potential avenues.

1. First listen, then have a conversation, don't just talk
   Too many Twitter accounts are still using the channel to broadcast information - mostly about themselves. Although some accounts have built a following around this approach, it generally doesn't work. It's fine to make a statement or post a link on Twitter but you need to follow up. If someone comments on your tweet, make sure to answer them. If they retweet you, then thank them.
   
   
2. Be interesting/ Be useful
   By now everyone knows that Tweeting what you had for breakfast is taboo. But it goes further than that. Think about the tweets you enjoy reading. What works in them? Will that also work for you?
   
   
3. Be Human
   Although it's a good idea to post useful information, it's also important to behave like a human being rather than a auto-posting robot. Expressing your opinion is fine as long as you keep it polite. A quick glimpse into what's going on in your world is good too - it helps people to connect to you as a person. And you never know what might work - after a lot of concerted posting on Social Media topics, the only retweet I got this week was about my misadventure when running for a bus!
   
   Additionally, it's wiser to avoid any kind of autoposting or autofollowing services. Autoposting is risky - how will you look if a major news story breaks and your only comment is "watch my video on...."? Similarly if you don't have the time to decide who you want to follow, you certainly won't have the time to wade through the flood of spam you'll get when you autofollow all the spammers who exploit such behaviour.
   
   
4. Be Original
   Half a billion people use Twitter. If you want them to pay attention to you, you'll probably have to offer them something they can't get elsewhere (legally).  I'm not saying that you have to be posting Buddha-like insights on life, but just rehashing content that your potential audience has already seen simply won't cut it. It's OK to Tweet links to other content but add your own opinion, put something of yourself into it - remember that you are the most original thing you have.
   
   
5. Be confident enough to promote others
   If you see someone else doing something good, don't be afraid to tell others about them. It won't detract from what you're doing. Instead you'll be respected as the person who recognised it was good and was happy to tell everyone else about it. Clearly you are a dude who knows where your towel is.
   
   
6. Follow others - and use lists
   The easiest way to make people aware that you exist is to follow them. Most twitter users regularly scan their list of followers to see if they have anyone new they'd like to follow back. I've already talked about Lists in depth. Just remember that they're a great way to identify and attract valuable followers.
   
   
7. Use your bio
   On Twitter, your bio can work like your business card. Often, if they're scanning lists or new followers it's the first thing about you that people see. So make sure it tells them who you are and what you're about - assure them that you're worth following. Don't forget to include a link to somewhere useful like a LinkedIn profile so you can tell them even more about you if they're interested.
   
   
8. Be consistent
   Don't leave your followers feeling conned. If your Twitter profile says that you breed racing turtles, then your twitter stream should probably contain plenty of tweets about breeding turtles and racing them. If things have changed and you're now into racing snails then update your profile accordingly. Otherwise you're misrepresenting yourself and that wins you no love.
   
   
9. Hashtags
   You should always be on the lookout for ways to help new people find you and your content. Hashtags are an ideal way of doing this. Getting involved in a discussion around a hashtag means that a lot of people - who might never see you otherwise - can become aware of you. Just make sure it's for the right reasons so post intelligently (unless the hashtag is #eurovision in which case all bets are off).
   
   
10. Review and make note of what works.
    It pays to step back periodically and look back over what you've been doing. Just do a quick sense check - does your output look intelligent and interesting to someone who has only just found you? Have some things worked surprisingly well (do more of them), have some been total flops (any idea why? Stop doing them)
    
    
11. Prune your followers
    Yes, I know this sounds counter productive but by your followers shall ye be judged. So make sure they're not predominantly busty blonds fronting obviously spam accounts. Do us all a favour; report and block them. You'll look less of a novice as a result.
    
    And finally...
12.  Do NOT sign up to those services that promise you 1,000 followers - remember it's quality not quantity you want

"I've got a little List"

So you've built up your Twitter followers and now you've got....well lots. And you're happy. What more can a successful Tweeter want?

Actually there's loads more you can do if you're looking to use Twitter effectively.  What about your lists?

Twitter Lists are an odd phenomenon. As with so many features of the service, it's something that has evolved in response to the way Tweeters use it. And there are so many different uses.

The fundamentals:

In brief, lists are simply lists of user names. You can either view the list of names or a stream of tweets from those users. Yes, just like your regular twitter feed.

You can create and maintain up to 20 lists. Within reason you can call them what you like. You can make them public or private. You do not have to be following someone to add them to a list.

You can follow a public list maintained by anyone else. There are no limits on the number of lists you can follow.

You can be added to an infinite number of other people's lists. You cannot stop your name being added to a list nor can you demand its removal (although you can ask nicely and hope)

So what's the point?

The obvious advantage for most people is the chance to filter tweets. If you follow a lot of people there's a good chance that your regular feed is updating too quickly for you to follow it properly. Messages you really want to see  are buried by those chugging in behind them and there are too many for you to scroll back, even assuming you knew what to look for. In those circumstances, a shortlist of important users is invaluable and lets you see the tweets you can't afford to miss.

I run several lists for this kind of purpose - I've got one for colleagues that I follow during the day and one for friends that I can check when I get home. Neither list generates a massive number of posts but if I had to deal with both at the same time it would slow me down enormously.

Additionally lists only show unaddressed tweets (those starting without the @ symbol) and those addressed to other people on the list. So it's a very useful way of following people without getting just their half of an online conversation.

But there are more sophisticated uses for lists....

Bear in mind that you don't have to follow accounts to put them on a list. Whilst it's always polite to follow back people who interest you, sometimes you may not want to.

For example I used to follow a lot of companies whose electrical products I owned; they would announce special offers and it was handy insurance in case anything ever broke down. However, following them meant that they could send me DMs, and a few were rather tiresome. It also meant their customer support tweets clogged up my main twitter feed. So I syphoned the worst offenders off into a list - their information was still at hand if I needed it but I didn't have to engage with them unless *I* wanted to.

Lists are a labour-saving device when you use other peoples'.  If you want to know who's worth following in a particular field, find an expert in that area and see who is on their lists. If they really know their stuff they'll have a list of industry experts that they update regularly - which saves you the job of doing a list of your own.

Flip that around and you realise that it's also useful to be ON lists as well as following them. It helps build your reputation. Adding someone to a list is a way of saying "I think this person is worth some attention". And if you look at the titles of the lists you're on, you get a very handy snapshot of how people view you.

Is it how you want to be viewed? Are you getting your twitter footprint right?

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Additional reading

To find out the mechanics (adding, deleting, following etc) of lists, check out Twitter's own help page on the topic: https://support.twitter.com/articles/76460-how-to-use-twitter-lists

To turbo-charge your use of  lists, try listorious.com

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"...International Tweeter of Mystery"

So you've set up your twitter account, posted a few times and followed a bunch of people. And what's happened?

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

With the exception of Barack Obama, a handful of pneumatic blondes with oddly similar profiles and your Mum, the twitterverse has ignored you.

Maybe it's because your profile looks like this:

Hear those crickets? See that tumbleweed? This profile screams "I GAVE IN AND SIGNED UP, OK? DON'T ASK FOR MORE THAN THAT!!!"

Let's dissect this:

User name

From an individual professional standpoint, your name is your brand online so it helps if all your social media identities reflect your real name in some way. Of course if your name is John Smith then I'm afraid you've pretty much missed the boat. However JnSmith or Jn_Smith might still be available. 

I'll admit this is a case of "Do as I say not do as I do" since my own twitter name is nothing like my real name - like many old Internet lags, it's a hangover from the halcyon days of message boards in the mid-90s when no one dared use their real name. I'd grab mine now though if I got the chance.

Profile photo

Lose the egg - nothing says "Ignore me" more than the default Twitter egg avatar. Ideally post a photo of yourself; if possible one that wouldn't make your mother wince. You want people to talk to you, they want to know you're a real person, this helps them to know who's at the other end of the line. For this reason don't be tempted to use those photos of hot blondes - you'll get rumbled eventually and by default everyone assumes that model photos aren't real.  

Failing that, pick something eye catching, something that will let people spot your tweets quickly without having to read your name as well.  One of my former colleagues used a striking photo of some branches against a brilliant blue sky.  I came to associate the photo with her and it was easy to pick her posts out in my twitter feed. Of course the drawback came when she decided to change it - it took me forever to adjust. Similarly you may find that your followers complain when you switch avatars - so chose wisely young Jedi.

Bio

A blank bio says "I'm probably a spammer who could not be bothered to fill this out".  There are 300 million people using Twitter. Your bio is the first thing many potential followers will see. Given the choice between "British Actor, Writer, Lord of Dance, Prince of Swimwear & Blogger" and "                               " which do you think would be more interesting?

However, you only have 160 characters for this so you need to get clever. If you can pull off humour then go for it, but remember that one man's comedian is another's smartarse so don't get too cocky. You need to give people a good idea of who you are, what you're about, what interests you AND persuade them you're worth their time and attention. No pressure.

Some tweeters - especially those who have a list of interests - get sneaky and add hashtags to key words so that their profile is more likely to pop up in searches for those topics.

If you're happy to say where you work, it's a good idea to include a mention of your employers' official Twitter account. Besides, it'll probably take up less space than the full company name. However if you do that, make sure that you include a disclaimer that all opinions are your own; you are not an official channel for your company.

Link

Don't waste any chance to give potential followers access to more information about you if they want it.  If you're using Twitter professionally, a link to your own web site or LinkedIn profile would be perfect here. 

Number of Tweets/Followers/Following

There's only so much you can do here. As far as the number of tweets is concerned just work on it and accept that you won't pick up too many followers while the numbers are still low unless you're a celebrity or a brilliant tweeter.  Regarding following/followers, ideally you should have something close to equal numbers here. Don't obsess about it but the classic sign of a spammer is someone following about 1,000 people of whom only a handful have followed back.

Of course there may be a dozen other reasons why you're not getting followers but at least with a decent profile you can rest assured it's not because they think you're a spammer/not real/a sociopath

...unless of course you are.

Don't be a Muppet

From Nalsa

Published on 09/03/2012 
Updated on 18/03/2022

 We published our social media guidelines this week. It's been quite a revealing process. I haven't had to make much of a distinction between behaviour online and offline. We haven't had to set up a Digital/HR/Legal steering group to define a brand new code of online conduct; the existing contract for staff has covered it all pretty well.

The overriding principle in either case is simply "Don't be a Muppet"

Curiously most feedback has been focused on the importance of following the guidelines if you're using social media for work or in an official capacity. In fact it's probably a good idea to follow the main points if you use social media period. If you behave like an idiot online, you may not damage your employer's reputation but you'll almost certainly dent your own.

It's a point that a lot of people miss. When it comes to reputations there are really no divisions between your employer, your own professional life and your private one. If someone searches on your name, they're going to find whatever is online relating to you and you won't get to stand by their keyboard anxiously explaining "Ignore that, it's my personal page....oh no, I don't drink like any more....of course I left that political group a long time ago...".  If they find it, they will read it. And by they I mean friends, neighbours, employers, prospective employers, spouses, prospective spouses, the press or - worst of all - your mother. 

Let's all take a moment to think about that.

Don't kid yourself that because you don't mention where you work, no-one can guess it. Inevitably you'll follow/tweet/make friends with colleagues who DO say where they work. And then you'll be associated with them by all those recommendation algorithms. You know, like the ones on Amazon that suggest you might want to buy Preparation H because you just looked at communion wafers.

 

Of course not every search result will relate to you. I'm quite lucky to share my name with a very eminent artist. Her results tend to outrank mine so all the sad fangirl posts I wrote on Sci-Fi boards back in the 90's are now safely languishing around page 20 of the search results. But not everyone is so fortunate. If you have an usual name or your job is quite high profile, you're pretty much screwed.

So what can you do about it?

Well the best option is to make sure that neither you nor your friends post anything online about you that you'll later regret. However if your friends are anything like mine I think we can safely assume that horse has long since bolted. My chums delight in taking candid photos of me asleep, half-awake or looking bored and posting them with the least flattering captions they can devise.

Plan B is to make sure that the good outweighs the bad. Doing a retrospective clean-up will always help but don't rely on it; Google cache is always there to fill in any newly-created gaps. People are far less likely to be critical of a single mistake when it's drowning in far more positive search results about you. So get out there and do sensible stuff - get involved in useful conversations, ask reasonable questions, share interesting, accurate/checked content, post cool photos on Pinterest or Flickr Instagram or even make intelligent comments on blogs.

Not that I'm hinting or anything....