If you want to know what makes for good tweeting, re-read that first paragraph a few times.
According to a few researchers (translation: people with nothing better to do), just 36% of tweets are worth reading. Which means that, for some of you, your tweets must really suck, because I know that 100% of my tweets are worth reading.
How do I know? Well, our esteemed researchers discovered that the best tweets fell into four categories:
1. Random thoughts
2. Self-promotion
3. Questions to followers
4. Information sharing
The worst tweets were in the following groups:
1. Opinion/complaint
2. Conversation
3. Presence maintenance
4. Me now
My take: What the research is basically saying is this:
- No one cares what problems you’re having. Stuck in the security line at the airport? Too fu*king bad. Tell it to the person next to you.
- No one cares what you have to say to other people. If the conversation doesn’t involve me, your conversational tweet bugs the crap out of me. And now I know that I’m not alone in that opinion.
- No one cares where you are, what you’re doing, or what you’re eating. If you’re thinking of tweeting one (or more) of those three things, do us all a favor and don’t.
- No one cares about you. Period.
Reading this article on the HBR site was a huge relief for me, because it confirmed what I had suspected all along: My tweets don’t suck.