If you can master the haiku-like compression of Twitter's 140 character limit (I'm followable at http://www.twitter.com/bradberens), and if you can then carry that powerful, high-information density compression forward into the rest of your online writing, then you're almost halfway to mastering the most important genre of online writing: the subject line in an email. (See bottom of this post for more on email.)
Twitter helps my writing. The tool in this case is the counter that shows you how many characters you have left in an individual tweet.
Let me show you how one tweet came to be over the course of a few seconds worth of self-editing. The background is that I've noticed that comment spam on my personal blog, www.mediavorous.com, has been spiking up, and wanted to mention that via Twitter.
First pass:
"Comment spam on www.mediavorous.com still seems to be on a dizzying rise up. This is just as bad a virus as anything that crashes a computer."
Not bad, but it's 2 characters over. "Seems to be" is wishy washy, so out it goes.
Second pass:
"Comment spam on www.mediavorous.com still on a dizzying rise up. This is just as bad a virus as anything that crashes a computer."
Now I have 8 characters left, but I see an opportunity for increased clarity. I don't need to advertise the name of my blog on Twitter, as those who are interested can click or find me easily -- and if I just have the URL then I think people are more likely to empathize with my plight, so...
Third pass:
"Comment spam on http://bit.ly/S5xli still on a dizzying rise up-- a virus as bad as anything that crashes a computer. Is it just my blog?"
But this pass is two characters over again. Looking, looking, I now see a problem with "on a dizzying rise up." Why do I need the word "up"? Where else would something rise?
Fourth pass:
"Comment spam on http://bit.ly/S5xli still on a dizzying rise-- a virus as bad as anything that crashes a computer. Is it just my blog?"
Made it with one character to spare. This is good and I almost click, but then I realize that I've double spaced after punctuation and have an extra space before the second use of "on," so if I single space I get two characters back and can change "it" in the final sentence to "this," which has more force as "this" points in a rhetorical direction while "it" just lies around--
Fifth pass:
"Comment spam on http://bit.ly/S5xli still on a dizzying rise-- a virus as bad as anything that crashes a computer. Is this just my blog?"
I want to add a certain emphasis, so I put MY in ALL CAPS and get the following 138 characters:
Final:
"Comment spam on http://bit.ly/S5xli still on a dizzying rise-- a virus as bad as anything that crashes a computer. Is this just MY blog?"
I hit the post button and only THEN realize that I still have an extra space after the first "on," but it's too late now.
Good online writing understands that readers are in a hurry, skimming fast and always looking for a better deal from another shiny object blinking at them from elsewhere on the website or inbox. Used properly, Twitter helps writers get to the good part fast.
Sidebar on email: A report out from Nielsen this week suggests that social networks now trump email as the most popular online activity, which I think is outright silly and when I saw the report I had the following dialogue with myself:
"Social networking more popular than email? Oh really. What about email within networks? Do users make much of a distinction between in-network email and regular email? What about the fact that Facebook, for example, emails members with updates? How closely is the Nielsen panel-technology monitoring Outlook versus browsers? Or is this just about growth? If so, then OF COURSE social networks are growing more than email-- email has a head start!"
Watch for a post about this from Katharine Panessidi later today.
Final word: a business person or just a person who can write effective subject email subject lines is on the road to success.
