How to write great content for Twitter

What is Twitter?

I’ve outlined this platform pretty well here and here.

What does it do for your business?

Having a Twitter profile increases your online footprint and offers another channel for your community to communicate with you.  Google also indexes tweets, so there are clear SEO advantages to being active on this platform.

Tone and style of tweets

While a tweet is limited to 140 characters INCLUDING spaces, this doesn’t mean that you can get too wild with abbreviations and ‘text speak’ – you have to maintain a level of professionalism, so rather get creative and master the art of brevity. Tweets can also contain other characters, besides plan text, I’ve listed them below:

Shortened URLs: Since you are limited to 140 characters, and some URLs can be very long, you can use free URL shortening services to create neat, short URLs. This is automatically available on Twitter, but you can also use services like Bit.ly and TinyURL.

Hashtags (#):  Hashtags are a way of categorising tweets. For example, if you tweet about the New Year and add “#newyear2015”, then your tweet will appear in the results of any search using that hashtag. The advantage of using hashtags is it allows your tweets to show in the results of searches conducted by others – even if they aren’t following you.

Mentions (@):  If you want to alert another user about your Tweet, including an @ symbol followed by their handle (for example, “@AlfalfaContent”) will place the tweet as a “mention” in their Twitter account. This is a good way of interacting with individual followers if it’s relevant.

Reply: If you want to reply to a Tweet, then Twitter will automatically include the handle of the user you are replying to in your tweet. Replies can eat into your 140 character limit so make sure you plan what you have to say.

Emoticons: Hearts, smiley faces etc can be used, but make sure you don’t go overboard.

What do you tweet about?

Tweets should always be industry related so maintain continuity with your brand.  Content that works includes:

• Industry-related quotes that are inspiring, funny, or motivating.
• Interesting, relevant articles, research papers, or blog posts from other online resources
• Links to interesting or relevant multimedia content from platforms like YouTube or Slideshare
• Special promotions or competitions that the brand may be running (but not too often)
• Links to your own blog posts, articles, or white papers that have recently been published

Things to remember when creating Tweets

• Don’t exceed the 140-character limit!  You will only be allowed to publish the allotted amount of characters; everything else will be removed from the tweet.
• Make sure that your tweets are relevant to your industry. Knowing your target market on Twitter is very important in making sure that you share content which is interesting. If your target market is not likely to be online or active on social platforms, then don’t waste your time on Twitter.
• You don’t need to include a URL in every Tweet. In fact, this may appear spammy.
• If you find an interesting blog or website, don’t just send people to the home page – send them to the specific page or blog post that is most relevant to your tweet.
• Keep in mind that you will gain more exposure if your tweets are retweeted. Always try and tweet content that is interesting, unique, and likely to be shared by your followers.
• It is fine to share funny things in tweets as long as they are in line with the brand voice.

Twitter is a relatively easy platform to master, but again it is just one tool in the social media toolbox, so don’t obsess over it, just make sure you are using it to it’s full potential.  If you don’t have the time or the skill to create interesting tweets for your followers, then get a professional online copywriter to do it for you.