When I first opened my Twitter account, I had a great deal of trouble learning to “say what I want to say” in the 140 character limit. After serving for years as a minister, I have learned to write in a conversational style. This method does not work well in the new world of social media.

Then I went through a denial phase. I just started doing multiple “tweets’ to get my whole message out. That didn’t work either. No one was responding.

So, I went back to an idea first taught to me by my philosophy/religion professor in undergraduate school. He had us write one page summaries of all our reading. Talk about a task! This is now my “mantra” for Twitter.

So how long should tweets be? The answer is simple in concept: you should tweet with the fewest possible characters to get you message out! Just like a haiku: one concept.

Other considerations for the length of a Tweet include two important items: any “re-tweet or index code” and any URL you add. My re-tweet is @celticozarkian. That knocks out 15 characters. If I index my social media tweets, #socialmedia , that will take 12. Add a tinyurl, and you can easily be down to 100 characters left.

Here are some new tips on Tweeting for length of message:

  • Make the message component 80 characters or less. 50 seems to be the new 140, so shoot for that!
  • Make your URL as short as possible. There does not need to be clear meaning in the URL itself. Example: my social media site is http://socialmediaintegration.info . I don’t need all this in the URL, to get people interested in clicking the URL. That is the job of the message.
  • Text message jargon is typically OK. Most people now understand an OMG, or IDK, or LOL. It saves you space. (My daughter says I still will not be cool!)
  • Use caps to express emotion. Just don’t do all caps, unless you intend to be angry.

Talk to you again soon,

Ray Province

Ray Province is a retired minister, who now works as an IT programmer in the healthcare industry. He also owns Celtic Ozark Solutions, and IT Company specializing in website, development, SEO, and social media marketing. You can reach him at celticozarksolutions@gmail.com or @celticozarkian on Twitter.

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