Writing an Effective Tweet

Updated July 3, 2024

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Avoid 7 Embarrassing Mistakes

Twitter is an important part of how businesses communicate. If you’ve avoided it so far in the hopes it will  go away like MySpace, it looks like you’re out of luck. Whether you aspire to become one of the Twiitterati, or at least not embarrass your company on Twitter, let’s look at what’s involved in writing an effective Tweet.

Lots of companies have a Twitter profile, but they either don’t Tweet or they don’t Tweet often. Writing an effective tweet will help you gain exposure, build a community or help give you an expert voice. Without you needing to spend all day tweeting…

So let’s look at our seven tips on how to avoid writing a bad Tweet:

7 Things to Avoid When Writing an Effective Tweet

1. It’s a sales pitch – A bad Tweet shouts “Buy! Buy! Buy!” This doesn’t mean a business can’t promote their products in a Tweet. It does mean that it shouldn’t be the main purpose of the message. Don’t Tweet over and over again that people should buy your book, hire you, or take any other sort of action that suggests they give you their money. Be more subtle and show value.

2. Hashtag spam – A bad Tweet is filled with a lot of hashtags. Unless a Tweet is a message to someone, it should contain some hashtags. But there is a right way and a wrong way to use them. Compare it to a meta tag on a blog post or image. Use them strategically and sparingly.

3. Hashtag Hijacking (Trendjacking) – This is using a trending hashtag or using a hashtag that is relevant to a conversation or brand to promote yourself or your business. Hootsuite wrote a great blog about why hashtag Hijacking is bad marketing, and how it can get you in trouble.

4. Hashtag-less Tweets – This doesn’t apply to every Tweet. For example, responses to another tweet are fine (but even those may need hashtags if you are in a group conversation). The purpose of a hashtag is so people can categorize their Twitter feeds and better follow topics of interest. So, add a few relevant keywords for all your messages.

5. TMI Tweets – Remember when everyone was on Foursquare, and everyone was telling the world where they were and what they were doing? Typically those people were unfollowed pretty quickly. Twitter is the same. It’s okay to Tweet about events or outings you attend. Share pertinent information. Just don’t overdo it.

6. Irrelevant Tweets – A small business recently sent us a generic Tweet suggesting we follow them on Twitter. Messaging people that they should follow you, especially without an introduction, makes you look desperate. The other problem is it came from a daycare in the Boston area. We are in California. Our business isn’t child-care related. The content they tweet is not relevant to what we do.

7. Unedited Tweets – When it comes to Twitter, there is some grace for misspelling. For example, obvious misspellings that are intentional. Sometimes, it is necessary to shorten a word or use an alternative spelling to fit all 140 characters into a Tweet. But it’s important to edit your Tweets and consider your reader. If you’re tweeting over 50s, they might not be as comfortable with a TWTs THT INC LTS OV LOLZ as someone in their teens might.

That’s my top 7 things to avoid when writing effective tweets. What would you add to the list in order to avoid looking like a twit?

Photo credit : MKH Marketing