About that Thread

400 tweets later...

If you were one of the lucky (or unlucky) people to join me on my days long epic thread, first off, I want to thank you. Every like, every comment, every RT means a lot to me, even if I couldn’t respond to you personally. After getting a few dozen tweets in, I lost the ability to see responses to earlier tweets. If I missed yours, I do apologize.

With that out of the way, I want to talk about better tweeting.

Generally, there are two kinds of tweet: things you think and things you see. For the most part, those tweets were observational. I saw something, it flipped a switch, and a couple tweets came out. There were a more than a few thoughtful tweets, things I had chewed on mentally, but of course, to fit inside the format of that thread, I had to reduce them to a single tweet, hopefully with a bit of bite.

*Pause*

The key to tweeting is to not repeat what everyone else says. So many times, I’ll open the comment section on someone’s tweet and it’s the same comment over and over and over. It’s all just noise. Don’t do that. If you want to respond, find a hook to set yours apart. There are times I don’t see other tweets and I add to the noise, but I do my best not to. Why? Because there’s less interest in the 56th tweet saying the same thing than in the first 3. Find a way to make what you’re saying entertaining. Entice people to want to like it because it’s different than all the others. Snarky, witty, whatever.

How do you do that? Look at the thought you’re trying to get across a different way. Instead of yelling at someone because they’re stupid or dropping a “that’s cute, tell me more” meme, find a way to get the point across without using the typical words. I admit failing at this more than I succeed, but unless you are practicing, you’ll never develop the perfect retort.

*Unpause*

I tried to create those tweets in the same style. Step back, look at a thought through a different angle, and go that way.

Take number 361. “Remember, Christmas is not about presents or candy or snow. It’s about a little baby born long ago so that you could get next year’s Christmas paper on sale at half off.” I started by going the direction of most Christmas movies: “Christmas isn’t about presents.” I leaned the direction of the birth of Jesus “it’s about a little baby born long ago”, which is wonderful but as a tweet in a thread would be filler and not different from hundreds or thousands of other tweets. By ending it with a shift away from the setup “so you could get next year’s paper on sale”, it landed in a way that a sincere tweet as well as many joke tweets wouldn’t have. (I’m not saying it was my best joke tweet, but it was the one I landed on.)

Learn to do that. Find a way to tweet that reflects your humor and your fun without getting caught up in the anger that permeates Twitter. That alone will set you apart, make your experience more fun, and probably get you more interaction.

Because, let’s face it: it’s all about that sweet, sweet dopamine.