Crafting a Useful Message in 140 Characters or Less

• Be Clear
• Be Direct
• Be Selective
• Be Informative
• Be Timely
• Be Consistent
• Be Tactful

Be Clear

Use complete phrasing as much as possible

Most followers will forgive you for changing words like 'to' to '2' and 'your' to 'ur,' so long as the rest of message is effectively conveyed. Avoid this practice unless absolutely necessary--which in truth can be quite often. The more it is obvious that without making these kinds of elisions and transliterations you would have exceeded the character limit, the better. Sometimes however, it is best to rephrase your message. Use a thesaurus to whittle down larger words, use adverbs and adjectives sparingly.

Don't just say things like "check this out," or "this is awesome"

Explain why it is awesome. Qualify your statement with some kind of evidence, or choose a more informative headline. Only use expressions like these when awesomeness is obvious in some way (be it visually, or contextually)

Be Direct

Use Hashtags

The best way to target your message is to tag it appropriately. Hashtags allow tweets to be categorized, converting content into atomized searchable data structures. Events, communities, or organizations commonly select a hashtag for relating individual tweets to one another that are about the same topic, or addressing the same audience. This practice is critical to targeting your message, and improves the usefulness and searchability of the content.

Bonus: Use In-line Hashtags

Oftentimes hashtags are listed at the end of a tweet. Keywords within your headline or message can be tagged by simply prepending a '#' before the word, without having to restate each one as an afterthought. This can help save you precious characters, and create more interesting (and searchable) headlines.

@Reply

If a particular story or message is pertinent to an individual or organization, engage with them directly by including their username with an '@' in front of it, directly within the tweet. It is likely the user joined this network because they wanted to be engaged directly, and mentioning them will guarantee you get their attention, and sometimes cause your tweets to show up in the stream of that user's followers (who do not follow you directly.)

Retweet

A great way to get your message across is to defer to someone who has already said it well. This also instills a certain level of reciprocity of messaging within some users, who will do unto others accordingly.

Be Selective

Your message history functions like a social media repertoire. Some people think of their tweets like a CV; the longer the list, the more clout it presumably carries. Some people choose to be much more selective about how often they tweet, and the content they are willing to share with their network.

Be Informative

Unless you yourself are the subject which your followers are interested in, you will likely want to share something in addition to your own thoughts. This is the 'payload,' or the meat of the message you are trying to relate or convey.

Eloquent quips or jokes, thoughtful observations, humorous commentary, and other forms of self-narrative can be effective ways to deliver a message, and can serve as their own payload. Doing this consistently can be a creative strain, and occasionally you should support your opinions with references to other sources. This will help illustrate your point, and provide legitimacy to your claims.

Images

Visual messaging can convey messages that would easily exceed 140 Character limits. "A picture is worth a thousand words" may sound cliché, but as a payload it is a message that can be quickly grasped, and transcend language barriers.

Links

Think of your tweet as the Headline, and the link as the full content. Follow the link first and be sure you know the nature of the content you are sharing. Many articles are written satirically, some headlines are intentionally sensationalist, and some are just incorrect. Be sure that the message you are crafting is consistent with the content you are sharing. If you are linking to content that is controversial, offensive or not-safe-for- work, indicate this to your audience in some way (perhaps with a #NSFW tag). Here are some suggestions to pique a reader's interest, and help with both the crafting and analysis of your messages:

Find an interesting message within the link you can quote directly.

Find the sentence or phrase that best characterizes the article, or the 'unexpected' bit that was surprising.

Use a URL shortening service to conserve precious characters.

For bonus points, use a URL shortening service with built-in analytics and metrics. Services like Bit.ly will track not only how many clicks a link gets, and when, but also from what source, and from where in the world (generally).

Be Timely

Success in many aspects of life is all about being in the right place at the right time. In the realm of messaging, this is no different. Sometimes when you say it, is just as important as what you are saying.

Be Consistent

Crafting one effective message is not enough. If you want to consistently draw eyeballs to your messaging, you need to consistently maintain a web presence. There are a number of services you can use to automate this process, but simply resolving to post at a regular interval, regardless of how frequent, is a good way to show your messages are useful.

But proceed with caution. There is a delicate balance to strike between signal and noise. Some followers will stick with you, regardless of how often you are broadcasting. Others will grow tired of your messages repeatedly showing up in their stream, and perhaps even unfollow you as a result. Even those who will continue reading your messages will have a hard time determining what is important from what is not, just from sheer volume alone.

Be Tactful

Don't demand or beg people to "like" or "repost" your content. If your message is worth sharing, and you position it visibly through proper channels, it will gain traction on its own.