How to Write a Good Tweet

Think like your readers. This is a bit of a no-brainer, but it's easily overlooked. For your tweet to be perfect, it needs to appeal most to your readers, to the majority of your network, and not to you. Unless you're a world-famous celebrity or brand with millions of devoted followers, adopting an attitude of 'they'll know what I mean' or 'everybody likes this!' will almost always backfire. You have to take the time to craft your tweet accurately and pleasingly, thus ensuring that it will be appeal to the highest number of readers. When you really know your audience, you can better create content that is engaging towards that audience.

Learn from other successful (and unsuccessful) people on X. Take a moment to peruse your X feed. Refresh the page. Who stands out? Why?

Grab the reader's attention. Conversely, there are many times when we suddenly notice the tweet of somebody we've only recently started following, or have previously not paid much attention to, because it was excellent. It ticked all of our boxes, and we read the tweet and clicked on that retweet button.

Use correct and acceptable punctuation. Almost nobody is likely to be offended or put off when they read something that paid attention to the correct use of punctuation. The opposite is not true – many people (enormous numbers if you use the internet as a gauge) feel that, rightly or wrongly, missing or an incorrect use of punctuation reflects poorly on the writer. Use full stops and commas. Put your apostrophes in the right place. Use speech marks and parentheses. Don't end every sentence with an exclamation mark. A simple hyphen can often be the difference between a real word and one that doesn't exist.

Use correct spelling. If you're a bad speller, or struggle with grammar, consider writing your tweets in your favourite word processor first. This might seem unnecessary, or even patronizing, but just to echo the sentiments above – people will judge you on how you write, and how you spell, and this will have a direct impact on whether your links are clicked and your updates retweeted.