To tweet or not to tweet

Like a lot of folks who have begun to tangle with Twitter, I experience tweet anxiety. I write stuff, think about it and delete it two minutes later. Why? Because I tend to care what people think of me, so I consider, if you barely know me or worse yet, you know me well, what would you think of that tweet? Would you think it was stupid? Worse yet, would you think it was boring? Since Twitter, Facebook and other social sites are part of my job description, I need to interact with them. This is forcing me to consider redeveloping an old long forgotten skill – writing short headlines.

Julian Lewis Watkins wrote in the book  The 100 Greatest Advertisements that 95% of the most effective headlines from the early years of magazine advertising were eight words or less. This is because magazine copywriters had to write tight headlines due to space concerns, much like Twitter. This also makes me think of more modern slogans like, “Just Do It”, “I’m Loving It” and “This Buds for You”. The obvious major difference is that millions of dollars of market research when into crafting those slogans.

I’ve got about 50 cents to spare on my next tweet. Sex and humor it is.

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