One of the blessings of Twitter is its convenient speed: sign into a myriad (if dwindling number of) portals or software – or straight into the Twitter site – and your genius is on its way to through the intertubes in only 140 characters.
One of the curses of Twitter is its convenient speed: sign into a myriad (if dwindling number of) portals or software – or straight into the Twitter site – and your genitals are on their way to through the intertubes in only 140 characters. Anybody following Representative Anthony Wiener? Anybody?
But how does a nonprofit get its important messages out in a mere 140 characters? For 1 thing, use abbrevs. &…
So as we return to texting pre-smartphone (when one had to deal with the telephone keypad and hit the number 3 three times to get an ‘I’) messages via Twitter, a lexicon of useful and meaningful ways to trim characters has evolved.
Tracey Gold gives a nice primer on her post at SocialMediaToday. She offers some useful practical examples that can not only get your tweets in under the limit, but sharpen word-choice as well.
One that I found especially helpful involved this bit of trimming (steps 7, 8, & 9 of 17):
Original: 7UP introduces new #packaging designed by “The Celebrity Apprentice” finalists Marlee Matlin, John Rich:
Characters: 126Suggested: 7UP introduces #packaging designed by The Celebrity Apprentice’s Marlee Matlin, John Rich:
Characters: 1127. “Introduces new” is redundant, get rid of new.
8. Remove quotes.
9. Use apostrophes instead of words when possible.
Note also how the hashtag for searching of related tweets is incorporated within the message – sweet.
Check out her other 14 ideas, and consider other ways to give your messages more oomph-fewer characters.
