Don't be boring on Twitter

We all love to Tweet.So here is an article to help us Tweet better and in an effective way!

Based on my personal experience, I have seen individuals type in different status and updates on Twitter and Facebook. Here are some thumb rules I follow while I tweet or update my status on FB

1. Think twice, publish once.
2. Never publish something that your boss, mom or your spouse will not approve
3. Remember, even if you delete a tweet or update, people might have taken a screen shot of it. So, if you have erred, admit it when asked and apologize.
4. Publish something that folks might be interested in. Avoid too much personal info. The article gives a good example on how "People do not care what you are eating for lunch"

In the article, the author nicely sums it up "Do be useful. Do be novel. Do be compelling. Do not, under any circumstances, be boring."

Here are the key messages from the article:

ld news is no news: Twitter emphasizes real-time information, so information rapidly gets stale. Followers quickly get bored of even relatively fresh links seen multiple times.

• Contribute to the story: To keep people interested, add an opinion, a pertinent fact or otherwise add to the conversation before hitting "send" on a retweet.

• Keep it short: Twitter limits tweets to 140 characters, but followers still appreciate conciseness. Using as few characters as possible also leaves room for longer, more satisfying comments on retweets.

• Limit Twitter-specific syntax: Overuse of #hashtags, @mentions and abbreviations makes tweets hard to read. But some syntax is helpful; if posing a question, adding a hashtag helps everyone follow along.

• Keep it to yourself: The clichéd "sandwich" tweets about pedestrian, personal details were largely disliked. Reviewers reserved a special hatred for Foursquare location check-ins.

• Provide context: Tweets that are too short leave readers unable to understand their meaning. Simply linking to a blog or photo, without giving readers a reason to click on it, was described as "lame."

• Don't whine: Negative sentiments and complaints were disliked.

• Be a tease: News or professional organizations that want readers to click on their links need to hook the reader, not give away all of the news in the tweet itself.