This week we got a lesson from our friend Bob Burg on how to effectively abbreviate words in our tweets to make it easier for our followers to RT (Re-Tweet) our thoughts.
Growing up in the age of texting, IMs and email the abbreviations came as no big surprise…but, what we failed to remember is that if you want your thoughts to get Re-Tweeted, you have to remember to give your followers enough characters to do so.
Try to keep your tweets under 120 characters by leaving out some unnecessary words and by using standard abbreviations such as:
- 2 instead of to
- U instead of you
- U2 instead of you to
- RU instead of Are you
- ur instead of your
- R instead of our
- & instead of and
And finally, instead of “check it out” just say “visit” or leave it out altogether, as people know why the link is there.
The easier it is 4 people to RT, the more they will. So the lower the character count, the better.
Bob Burg is coauthor (with John David Mann) of the Wall St. Journal/BusinessWeek Bestseller, The Go-Giver. Their newest book, Go-Givers Sell More, has recently been released. Download Chapter One.
