Tips for journos (or anyone else) wanting better Twitter

Last week I was asked by McClatchy Interactive for some tips for other journalists wanting to make this whole Twitter thing less than a complete waste of their time. (As opposed to failing and then making their failure a complete waste of OUR time.)

Despite the fact that I got my print job by first writing on the Internet, I've never considered myself a bleeding-edge tech guy. I just know a useful tool when I see one -- blogging, Google Groups, Brian Cashman, you name it. From the moment I read about it a year ago in Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody (now in paperback!), I knew I wanted to be on Twitter. But it actually took me a few more months to figure out how to make it truly useful, and hopefully these pointers will save you that lag time.

And if your editors are convinced Twitter is just a distraction from your real work and impossible to monetize, (a) what else is new and (b) read on.

Twitter / tvbarn - How to brew a great microblog

1. You know the rules, they got you this far, so stick with them. Be professional, provide sourcing (in the form of links), and above all, when you write, have something to say!

2. Write in plain, readable English. You'll almost always have to rewrite down to 140 characters, but do it with word choices and dropped punctuation (I put TV shows in ALL CAPS instead of quote marks to save two characters). Avoid oddball abbreviations and contractions. Multi-tweeting is usually a cheat, too. If you can't get it down to 140, you should probably be blogging it. Try getting down to 130 characters, which helps with retweeting.

3. Follow at least 200 folks from all walks of life, including your neighborhood. Retweet generously, especially those with links. Use replies sparingly and only when replied to first. (Replies are Twitter's Achilles heel; they're usually too cryptic for public consumption.)

4. You'll be more productive using a full-featured standalone application like TweetDeck or Twitterrific instead of the web site. Load the Twitter application for Facebook for effortless cross-posting. Put a badge on your blog.

5. Make sure it's fun. For me, that means using Twitter as a telegraph to keep up on the news and send out some of my own. I do a daily headcount, but don't keep track of who's following or unfollowing me. I don't set a quota. I don't worry that I don't use hashtags. I don't poll my tweeps or use them for story ideas. Mostly, I just get a kick out of writing a compact, must-read tweet and reading smart, interesting ones others write. Being retweeted is fun, too.

6. Make it pay. I am working on a script to post my tweets once a day to my TypePad blog so they are searchable and we can display ads with them. (If you're on WordPress, there's a plugin that does this.) If media people blog their tweets, they can improve their reach. The founders of Twitter plan to make money off their nifty product -- why can't we?

(Icons courtesy TDS)