How to Write Anything
Tweeting is Writing, Too
To use Twitter effectively, think more about your audience than yourself
--
This story is part of Forge’s How to Write Anything series, where we give you tips, tricks, and principles for writing all the things we write in our daily lives online, from tweets to articles to dating profiles.
Tweeting is writing. Twitter gives you the sugar rush of blogging, only with 99% less effort, but, still: It’s writing. I know a lot of online choads don’t use the platform with that mindset. That’s why they suck.
But you don’t have to suck. Being a better writer makes you a better tweeter, and vice versa. You can have a voice on Twitter, but you have to put SOME thought and care into it. I’m not gonna make you do worksheets or anything. But I am gonna teach you to leverage the freedom Twitter gives you to the benefit of both you and your followers.
Because the freedom of Twitter is vast. You can write about anything and anyone. You can BE anything and anyone. That freedom spawns a lot of belligerence, but there’s a sweet spot where you can use that freedom to enter into the fray with good cheer and, against all odds, make yourself the life of the party. You can be the reason OTHER people on Twitter are having a good time. Every tweet you write is the first impression you’re making on someone, somewhere, and you can make a handsome one even now. You just need to follow a few rules:
Be genuine
Don’t douse yourself in protective irony, looking for popularity but not actual human connection. Then you’ll be just like every other guarded dipshit, and your Tweets won’t connect.
Tweet only occasionally
Serial over-tweeters — we’re talking multiple tweets an hour, every waking hour — are a scourge upon humanity and must be dealt with.
