Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

61Writing for TwitterDialogue, Not Monologue

More than almost any other social media platform, Twitter is intended for conversation and banter—often with strangers. That means tweets work best as a dialogue, because dialogue establishes rapport and encourages interaction.

For example, you could simply post a news story with a headline and a link to the original source (in this case, Mashable), like this:

“How One Woman Hid Her Pregnancy from Big Data,” http://mashable.com/2014/04/26/big-data-pregnancy.

Instead, here's how I posted that story this morning as @marketingprofs (I'm also @annhandley on Twitter), because I wanted to give some context to the story. I explained why I liked it and why I considered it worth sharing.

Earlier in the book I talked about using Donald Murray's filter for news (“What would make your reader turn and say, ‘Now listen to this, Ira…’?”). For Twitter, I'm suggesting that you be Ira's wife and write a tweet as if you were talking directly to Ira. Even if you, like me, are sometimes representing a company or brand.

In other words, even though you might be talking to strangers on Twitter, you're still talking to people. So write every tweet as you would speak it…to your girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other, dog, cat, goldfish swimming in its fishbowl—or whoever you can imagine in the room with you.

Here's what else to consider…

1. Establish ...