The Art of Tweet Reviews

Salutations Wayfinder!

Last week, we discussed how I turn recruiters into clients as a one-person business. This week, we'll look at the art of tweet reviews, which is a process I've been using with blockchain clients that can double the impact on your community or business. 

Last week's premium newsletters (open for all until the end of September):

• Daily #101: Bitcoin, Social Networks & Sense of Community

• Daily #102: Why we create small-world echo chambers

• Daily #103: Confirmation bias within Bitcoin communities

• Daily #104: Indigenous Incan Socialism

• Daily #105: Defending against mob mentality

Reviewing tweets allows you to be more intentional about what you put out to the world, as well as learn from both the language and the way it influences others.

This is similar to the way comedians review their own performances, and take note of which lines resonate with their audiences (or not).

So you could say that Twitter is to community-builders what the Apollo Theatre is to comedians. A tough crowd, but great once you master it.

A brief history of Twitter-based communities

In 2006, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Noah Glass, and Evan Williams launched Twitter. Within 6 years, more than 100m users posted 340 million tweets a day, with 1.6b searches a day.

Due to its public nature, it became the "town square" of the Internet. I've also talked about Twitter being a "small-world network" in Issue #101. Because it is so public - bots, spammers, and social engineers thrive. To the point where it is a political tool for civil unrest.

According to Twitter, less than 5% of its accounts are bots. Yet, Twitter's former security chief said the company lied about its bots and safety.¹ As a result, social engineering and anonymity on Twitter create acceptable toxic behaviors. You can see how this pervades modern culture with things like "mean tweets."

Earlier in the week, I shared how platforms like Twitter can also reinforce echo chambers, confirmation bias, and mob mentality.

Yet, despite these shortcomings, Twitter is still a vital place for communities to extend geographic reach, provide temporal autonomy, and diversify best practices.²

You just need to know how to navigate it.

So what are Tweet Reviews?

Tweet Reviews are the process of thinking and reviewing tweets before acting. Sounds simple enough, but it requires an understanding of how Twitter users absorb information through the platform. It also helps to have an innate knowing of how your audience or community thinks.

Due to the speed and ease of writing on Twitter, you can find many examples of users reacting without much thought. Even I have been guilty of this because the platform optimizes for such behavior.³ It is so out of hand, though, that tweets from ex-US presidents like Donald Trump helped coordinate an insurrection.

So as you can see, Twitter can be "good" or "bad" depending on who's using it. Like any tool.

8 steps to reviewing tweets more effectively

Since most users tweet without much thought, you can enhance your reach, engagement, and impact by being more intentional.

In the spirit of slowing down when technology is speeding up, here is a process I use with clients to bring more intentionality to tweets. This often results in 2x their impact and reach.

The following steps are best with teams or peers but you can also use them solo:

1. Select a recent tweet that didn't perform well

2. Highlight any problems (why you think it might not be working well with your audience)

3. Jot down solutions and/or corrections

4. Spend 5-10 mins re-writing it

5. If there's a link included in the tweet, copy and paste it into a word-cloud generator (e.g. Monkey WordCloud Generator)

   1. Choose the top 3 keywords

   2. Paste your 3 keywords into a hook-generating tool (e.g. TribeScaler)

   3. Choose best tweet and refine with your brand tone & voice

6. Use Hemingway app to simplify even further

7. Re-schedule the new tweet (e.g. using HypeFury)

8. A/B test the two tweets after a week to compare results

When going through the steps above, please note that it helps to understand the general flow of effective tweets. Since I study the writings of Justin Welsh a lot, you can get an idea of effective structuring by looking at tweets in the following manner (courtesy of Devin McPaul):

Featured Tools

• Monkey WordCloud Generator - find your most common keywords

• TribeScaler - an AI tool for creating viral hooks for your tweets

• Hemingway - write like Hemingway, simplify your writing

• HypeFury - a popular social media management tool for pro tweeters

If you'd like a video tutorial or Notion template to work off of, reach out to me on any of the links under my signature below, and I'll shoot them to you. I also offer 1:1 tweet reviews for blockchain or Web3-based accounts, if time permits.

Until next week, remember: through patience & persistence, it will come.

GeorgeTwitter | LinkedIn | Blog 

❤️ Loved this content? Get deeper insights about growing one-person businesses, building productive communities in the blockchain space, and applying ancestral wisdom. Click here to upgrade for just $10/mo. 

References:

1. Vincent, James. (2022, Aug 23). Twitter's former security chief says company lied about bots and safety. The Verge.

2. Komorowski, Marlen. (2018, Apr). Twitter data analysis for studying communities of practice in the media industry. Telematics and Informatics, Volume 35, Issue 1, pages 195-212.

3. Yoo, J., Choi, S., Choi, M. and Rho, J. (2014), "Why people use Twitter: social conformity and social value perspectives", Online Information Review, Vol. 38 No. 2, pp. 265-283.

4. DeJohn, Amber D. October 2022. Identifying and understanding communities using Twitter to connect about depression: cross-sectional study. National Library of Medicine.

5. Macmillan, Gordon. October 4, 2019. Twitter unveils a groundbreaking study into its audience. Twitter Marketing.