Ed: The Living Landscape Observer is fortunate enough to have Deanna Beacham manage our twitter account (@landscapeobserv). Below are some great tips Deanna crafted for us on how to make the most out of only 140 characters!
- The best tweets are those with a handcrafted lead or headline and an illustration (embedded) or context (usually included via link.)
- Don’t use other social media apps, like Facebook or Instagram, to source or push your tweets. It results in fragmented headlines, which are annoying.
- Avoid making your readers click on links from other apps. They may not have accounts on that app, and it’s frustrating to find they can’t see the content. Corollary: no links to commercial news sources that have a paywall, or require an account or login.
- Tweets with an embedded picture always have a higher read and retweet ratio, so put pics in as many tweets as possible, even if it means adding your own.
- Unless the source is a commercial publication, a good ratio of retweets from other sources vs. one’s own original tweets is above 10:1.
- Never beg or ask for followers. If you’re good enough, you shouldn’t need to, and it’s demeaning.
- Cultivate good sources of content that fit your account’s philosophy. Make friends with their content providers, and retweet their best stuff, so they will be more likely to retweet your tweets in return.
- Don’t try to elevate your content or status by giving your content headlines with All Capitalized Words. It’s pretentious.
- Most Twitter sources go on a binge now and then and send out an overload. That’s expected, but be aware of your binges, and try to limit them.
Deanna Beacham is the American Indian Program Manager for the National Park Service Chesapeake Bay. When not at her job, she manages the Living Landscape Observer Twitter account, and advocates for various Native, conservation, and environmental causes. You can follow Living Landscape Observer at @LandscapeObserv, or Deanna at @ndngenuity.