Tweet Like an Eagle!Write Reader-Friendly Tweets

That Get Attention and New Followers

by D. Arthur Watsonaka Xunez

Smashwords Edition

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Published by:David A. Watson at Smashwords

Tweet Like an Eagle!Write Reader-Friendly Tweets

That Get Attention and New Followers

Copyright 2011 by David A. Watson

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTIONCHAPTER ONE Eye-Catching AvatarsCHAPTER TWO Reader-Friendly TweetsCHAPTER THREE Useful Internet SitesCHAPTER FOUR Internet Twitter vs. TweetDeckCHAPTER FIVE To Follow or Not to FollowCHAPTER SIX Good & Bad Twitter BehaviorCHAPTER SEVEN Focusing Your Twitter AccountCHAPTER EIGHT Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

"Tweet Like an Eagle" is for Twitter users who want to write reader-friendly Tweets Tweets that attract attention, get read, draw new followers and retain the old ones. You will also find ideas about avatars, Twitter etiquette, and helpful Internet sites. This book assumes you have some experience with Twitter. Relative newcomers will find information that could take weeks or months to discover on their own. Veteran Tweeters will find many ideas they will want to try.

What qualifies me to teach about effective writing? Although my Twitter experience only goes back to September 2010, my writing experience goes back decades. One of my first jobs was to create direct mail appeals for a major publisher.

An important assignment was writing blurbs (short descriptions) for books sold through Doubledays Book Club Division. The requirements for a blurb were very strict. The maximum number of characters in a blurb was specified by an art director. The copy had to make readers want to buy a book. This was before computers. Everything was done on typewriters, so I would make "rulers" by typing "12345698901234567892 " and so on, cut the ruler from a piece of paper then use the ruler to help quickly count the number of characters in a blurb.

Perhaps because of this experience, I dont see Twitters 140-character maximum as limiting. In fact Tweets are a path to good writing writing that is pithy, thought-out, appealing to the eye plus (in tune with todays demand for speed) quick to read and understand.

Feedback from followers shows that others do enjoy my Tweets:

"Hon, you have great Tweets.""I look forward to your Tweets.""I am enjoying your Tweets! Thanks for following back!""Youre right. To put big ideas into little words is an art.""Just a note to express that You Are Amazing, Very Much Appreciated & of course

Admired!"

Happy Tweeting! The Twitterverse is breathlessly awaiting your powerful new Eagle Tweets!

T-W-E-E-T!

CHAPTER ONEEye-Catching Avatars

First impressions are important, which is why this book about writing reader-friendly Tweets begins with a brief discussion of avatars. Your avatar, the unique image representing you on Twitter, is the first thing a potential reader notices. An attention-getting avatar will draw people to a Tweet even before they actually start to read its message.

This is like the concept of "curb appeal" in real estate. The appearance of a property from the road is the first thing a potential buyer will see. The seller wants to be sure the "curb appeal" is as attractive as possible.

In Twitter, your Tweets curb appeal is determined by the appearance of your avatar. That is the first thing a reader will notice. You almost certainly have an avatar already, but here are some ideas you should consider:

Avatar Dos and Donts

1. Dont use a complex photo or drawing as your avatar.What is a complex photo? A picture of a forest would be complex. A picture of a

single tree would be simple.Complex photos can cause confusion among your fellow Tweeters, something that

may stop them from ever getting around to reading your Tweets. Avatars are small. When you reduce a picture of a scene to the size of an avatar, the original image may become difficult or impossible to decipher. The avatar becomes more of a Rorschach Test than a coherent picture.

Lets say you cant quite figure out what a persons avatar represents. Rather than read their Tweet, you enlarge the avatar to get a better look. Surprise! The enlarged avatar shows a kitten on a sofa! In the meantime, you have spent more time trying to figure out what someones avatar is than you have reading the Tweet.

Patterns or designs are an exception to the rule of not using complex photos as avatars. Patterns must also be reduced to avatar size, but the smaller image usually wont puzzle the viewer.

2. Avoid using the generic "egg" avatar provided by Twitter.When you first join Twitter you are assigned a generic avatar, a pastel colored square

behind a white egg. Unless you want your avatar to get lost in the crowd, dont use Twitters generic avatar. Spammers and trolls (in brief, troublemakers) often use the generic Twitter avatar because they are more interested in causing trouble than they are in having unique avatars. You do NOT want others to mistake you for a troll!

The generic egg avatar may give the impression you are too lazy or too uninterested to have a personalized Twitter account that will draw readers and followers. If you show few signs of caring about your Twitter account, why should anyone else care? Why should they bother to read your Tweets? Why should they follow you?

Your Tweets may seem to be extremely interesting, fascinating, and clever. If fewer people are drawn to them because of your generic avatar, what good are they? Earlier you read that your avatar plays the same function in Twitter as curb appeal does in real estate. The curb appeal of a generic avatar is the equivalent of having weeds in the front yard of

a house in need of a paint job. Result: no sale.I have seen a number of accounts that use the generic avatar and have lots of

followers. I am still convinced they would have even more followers if they had a unique avatar with eye appeal.

3. If personal privacy is important to you, dont use a picture of yourself as an avatar.

Many Tweeters use photos of themselves as their avatar. Tweets about controversial subjects sometimes attract the attention of people who will object strongly, so strongly you may suspect they are deranged! What if one of these fruitcakes recognized you on the street and decided to make trouble? Such encounters are unlikely, nevertheless I decided to change my avatar from a picture of myself to what you now see at http://twitter.com/ - !/xunez.

4. Do use a bright, easy-to-recognize avatar.If people are attracted to your avatar and enjoy your Tweets, they will start looking

for your avatar to scroll by so they can read your latest missive. Such people become loyal followers.

I have received a number of compliments about my avatar from people who follow me.

Here are just a few:

"I love your AVATAR!! very eye catching .... RLOL he he he.""Cute avatar.""Affirmative. It's popping LOL ;-)""Lol!But its about your eyes! :)) funny! Like that!! Look like 2 golf balls!

Weeeeee!""I like your eyes. *wink*""My wife thinks your icon is cute!"

If you have a large following that is continuing to grow, think before changing your current avatar. You cant argue with success! Whatever your avatar may be, your followers are used to it. A change in an established avatar might lose a few followers.

If you are fairly new to Twitter or the growth in your followers has stalled or started to slip, consider following some of the advice above. I changed my avatar after being on Twitter for about three months. I could not detect any loss in followers. I also know of one Twitter account that changes its avatar weekly. When asked if this causes a drop in followers, this Tweeter replied "No."

OK, enough about avatars. Next "Tweet Like An Eagle" will jump right into the nitty gritty of writing reader-friendly Tweets.

CHAPTER TWOReader-Friendly Tweets

Most people know what "user-friendly" means when it comes to computers. What exactly are "reader-friendly Tweets"? A reader-friendly Tweet appeals to the readers eye even before it is read. Which of the following Tweets would you rather read:

(1) #HC #mandate #tcot #ocra Read this true story: Ive had five #children born at homeno doctor, no hospital.

Or...

(2) Read true story: Ive had 5 children born at homeno doctor, no hospital. #HC #mandate #tcot #ocra #children

The first is the original Tweet. The second has been edited. Most people would find the second Tweet easier to read and understand. Both are 108 characters long. The second Tweet puts its message first and special "Twitter-speak" material at the end. Text interrupted by website addresses or other Twitter symbols and words are not inviting to read. If a Tweet is difficult to read out loud, most readers will move on to something else. When something short such as a 140-character Tweet is being read, the impulse to move on is even stronger than with longer material, such as paragraphs in books.

"Tweet Like an Eagle" refers to the whole category of items that tell a Tweet where to go as "links." They link a copy of a Tweet to websites, other Tweeters, and hashtag locations.

Hashtags begin with "#" and post a copy of your Tweet to user communities, Tweets about a particular news event, a specific topic or other specialized interests. The "@" followed immediately by a username posts a copy of a Tweet to a particular user. URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) will open a website on the Internet.

Depending on how you use Twitter (from its Internet site, a smartphone or a desktop program like TweetDeck, described in detail later), links will either be underlined or in a different color than your Tweets actual message. When links interrupt your Tweets message they can cause readers to pause, stop reading your Tweet and switch to more reader-friendly Tweets.

So the first rule for creating reader-friendly Tweets is:

1. Start your Tweets with uninterrupted messages and put most links (hashtags, URLs & often @s) at the end of your Tweets.

Rule #1 is number one for a good reason. No other rule will increase your readership more than this.

Newcomers to Twitter immediately feel like outsiders when they see Tweets broken up by links with their little esoteric symbols. "I was thinking about @YRMurphy the other day and wondered how he felt about #acurrentissue." When a Tweets message is broken up like this by links, its hard to read and can be downright intimidating to a new member of Twitter. Less venturesome souls may give up on the whole thing. Its in the interest of everyone who uses and enjoys Twitter to encourage new voices, so make your Tweets reader-friendly.

In summary put the meat of your Tweet the message at the beginning. Put links at the end.

The "@" is sometimes an exception. Why? Because when used in front of a Tweeters username, it sends a copy of a Tweet to a specific individual. Just as a letter begins with "Dear Somebody," an @username at the start of a Tweet is fine. Everybody is attracted to and reads their own name. Few will ignore a Tweet addressed to themselves.

2. Do not write Tweets in all capital letters. All-cap messages are hard to read and SEEM LIKE SHOUTING. Using all capital

letters in emails is called "flaming." It means the writer of the email is yelling at you and is probably angry. Writing words in all-caps to indicate a book title or for emphasis is fine. Just dont overdo it.

3. If the purpose of your Tweet is to direct readers to a URL, feel free to write a more clever version of the Internet sites headline. Also if you have an idea, add your own commentary.

A headline on an Internet news story read "Germany Marks Construction of the Berlin Wall."

This by itself could be used as a Tweet. A more imaginative Tweet would be: "Good fences make good neighbors? Not always. This is the 50th anniversary of Berlin Wall construction."

An old but tested adage among copy editors is that the best headline for an article is often found in the body of the story.

A headline on an Internet site read "IRS staff committed tax credit fraud." The more interesting sentence "More than 100 employees of the Internal Revenue Service cheated the government." appeared in the article.

Use that sentence to start the Tweet. Embellish it a little more by adding something like "I am Claude Rains shocked!" at the end.

4. Dont limit your Tweets to items you picked up on the Internet. Tweets based totally on your own thoughts help your followers get to know you better.

For example: "When someone says they dont believe in absolute truth, ask them if theyre absolutely sure."

5. Shorter is better. Use a thesaurus to locate shorter words. Youll find a good one at Thesaurus.com.Also dont say something in your Tweet if its not necessary. You can often

eliminate words like "that" or "I think" (The Tweet is obviously what you think so why use up precious characters to say so?).

Abbreviations are an exception to the rule that "shorter is better." Dont use them unless youre convinced there is no other way you can keep your Tweet under the 140-character limit. The problem with abbreviations is they slow down the reader. You may know the meaning of an abbreviation but many readers will need a few seconds to figure it out. Rather than take time to decipher an abbreviation-riddled Tweet, they are much more likely to stop and read someone elses reader-friendly Tweet.

6. Use Scheduled Tweets so you will have time to spot typos and improve Tweets

before they are actually posted.There are at least two ways to schedule Tweets in advance. One of them is a desktop

application called TweetDeck. Youll find it at TweetDeck.com. A later chapter explains more.

The other is a website located at Twaitter.com.

7. Keep your followers smiling! Add some humor to your Tweets.Example: an Internet story had the perfectly fine title "The Lemonade Stand Threat."

Instead of using this as your Tweet, jazz it up a bit with facts from the body of the story and a few exaggerations: "Small Iowa town hit by horrific crime wave! Vicious 4-year-old delinquent opens a lemonade stand!" [followed by the URL and other links.]

8. Mix it up. Dont post Tweets that are all URLs, all famous quotes, all retweets, all "Follow

Friday" type shout-outs, all "Im-at-the-laundromat" type Tweets, or all anything. Repetition is boring.

You probably wont be able to or even want to follow all eight of these suggestions in one Tweet, but if you use these ideas sensibly you should notice an increase in the number of people who comment on or retweet your messages. This should lead to a steady growth in followers.

CHAPTER THREEUseful Internet Sites

Numerous websites can help you free of charge in the process of writing effective, reader-friendly Tweets. Several will help keep your Twitter account in good order. Here are few of the best. Some have been briefly mentioned earlier:

1. Thesaurus.comThis is a great online thesaurus to help you quickly locate just the right word plus a

dictionary, quotations, a translator and more. You will often want to find a shorter word to replace something in your Tweet so you can stay within the 140-character limit. Why say "preposterous" when you can say "silly"? The first word is twelve characters long. The second word gets the job done and saves seven precious characters.

2. RhymeZone.comUsing rhymes in Tweets or replacing familiar words with similar sounding words

can be fun and can make a Tweet memorable. Obviously people love to be entertained, and making them laugh is a great way to attract new followers and cultivate your current ones. Here are examples where the expected word is replaced with a rhyming word. The last Tweet rhymes within itself:

(a) "I drink, therefore I am." Seems to be the motto of some celebrities.(b) Fooled Around and Fell In Tub #noninspirationalsongs(c) Taxpayers share the pain. Non-taxpayers share the gain.

3. Brainyquote.comDont be like some Tweeters who overuse or even post only quotations as Tweets. A

quote may say something witty, wise or important. It says little about you personally beyond your ability to find interesting quotations. Why should anyone follow you when countless other people can and do! Tweet the same quotes?

The best time to use the occasional quote is when you find one that makes a statement pertinent to the interests of your followers. Suppose one of the major headlines of the day says a country has test fired a rocket with a nuclear warhead. The following quote used as a Tweet would have extra meaning because of the days headlines:

"Everyrocket firedsignifiesa theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." Dwight D. Eisenhower.

This is a long quotation by an author with a long name. To come in at or below the 140-character limit some of the quote had to be omitted. This is fine as long as the deletions dont change the original meaning of the quote. Indicate where words or phrases have been omitted by using an ellipsis, usually three periods.

Just for fun, here is my favorite Tweet with a quote:"Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian." Herman Melville.

Unless the cannibal wakes up first!

4. Thetwitcleaner.comGo to this website every week or so. Your followers are analyzed, plus it looks at

people you follow who are not following you. Twit Cleaner generates a report dividing

your friends into various categories. Because Twit Cleaner examines the behavior of everyone you follow or who follows you, the report can take several minutes to generate. But you dont have to hang around Twit Cleaner waiting for it.

Twit Cleaner will notify you by email when your report is ready. The email provides a link that takes you to the report. The Twit Cleaner report will show you people who have not followed you back, those whose Tweets consist of just links to Websites, people who have not made a Tweet in over a month, bots and more. Based on the report you can easily clean out the "dead wood" from the accounts you are following.

One caution regarding Twit Cleaner is to pay close attention to those who fall into the "Hardly Follow Anyone" category. Many of these people are celebrities or other prominent figures. You probably dont expect such people to personally follow you but you may still be interested in what they have to say. Solution: do nothing. Do not tell Twit Cleaner you want to "unfollow" them.

5. Followfridayhelper.com"Follow Friday" is a Twitter tradition in which Tweeters post lists of people they

recommend others follow. The people on your Follow Friday list are usually selected based on how many times people have Tweeted you over the past week. You may also decide to include people you like personally but who dont interact with you very often.

Keeping track of Tweeters you want on your own Follow Friday recommendations can be complicated and time consuming. Follow Friday Helper does most of the work for you. It will create a list sorted by those who have Tweeted you the most to the least over the past week. You decide how your Follow Friday Tweets will begin ("#ff" is the shortest). You then click on the @usernames to add them to your Follow Friday Tweet.

Post the Tweet once it has reached the 140-character limit. Then begin a new Tweet starting with the next name on the Follow Friday recommendations. You could easily end up sending five or six Follow Friday Tweets each with multiple Tweeters whom you recommend.

Be sure to evaluate the list of people who have posted only one Tweet over the past week. Almost always you will create a Follow Friday Tweet made up of people who dont Tweet you very often. You may still want to recommend some of these people because you admire the quality and content of their Tweets or just because you like them personally.

6. TwitterCounter.com and Tweasier.comThese sites give you interesting statistics about your account. You might want to jot

down your statistics before following the suggestions in "Tweet Like an Eagle." After you have used the advice in "Tweet Like an Eagle" for a month or so, check your statistics regularly to confirm improvements in your stats.

Twitter Counter will generate a graph showing the growth in your followers. It also projects follower growth over the next fifteen days. You will see estimates of when your account will reach milestone numbers of followers, such as 1000, 2000, etc. You will see where your account ranks in the entire Twitter universe by number of followers. My account ranks at about 98,000 out of a Twitter universe of around 200 million. Twitter Counter also sends weekly email updates with a graph of your account growth.

Tweasier can be used in all sorts of ways. One of the most interesting numbers it generates is "influence." You may have to hunt around to find this number. Still its fun

to see the total number of people you reach indirectly through your followers followers. My influence is about 4.6 million.

7. Klout.comYour Klout Score is a number from 1 to 100. This represents the overall impact of

your Twitter account. The site also tells you the actual number of followers who are actively engaged in reading and responding to your Tweets.

Businesses use their Klout Score to track the influence of their Twitter account. If you Google "Klout" you will find numerous articles discussing its significance. As of this writing my Klout Score is 63. I have about 2300 followers but my "True Reach" is 905 people who closely follow my Tweets. You will have to do a few Google searches to determine how your Klout score compares with the average.

CHAPTER FOURInternet Twitter vs. TweetDeck

Many people get their first look at Twitter on its Internet site, located at Twitter.com. This website makes it simple to sign up and use Twitter. People who dont like to read instructions can easily start and learn through hands-on experience. "Tweet Like an Eagle" calls the Twitter you see using your Internet browser "Internet Twitter."

Another favorite interface for watching and using Twitter is TweetDeck. Twitter itself gave the ultimate endorsement to TweetDeck when it bought the company. You can check out TweetDeck and its various incarnations at TweetDeck.com. You may find yourself spending more time with TweetDeck than Internet Twitter.

TweetDeck has an invaluable feature called Scheduled Tweets, mentioned earlier. With Scheduled Tweets you can write Tweets days, weeks, even months in advance, specifying the exact time and date for your Tweet to be posted. (TweetDeck uses military time. If youre unfamiliar with military time, use Google to find an explanation.) Scheduling Tweets in advance, even the ones that will be posted in just a few minutes, has important advantages to help you post reader-friendly Tweets.

Youll see your Tweets on your screen before they are posted. You are much more likely to spot typographical errors. Typos can spoil otherwise great Tweets. Most readers will figure out what the Tweeter meant. But fairly or not, typos seem to indicate the Tweeter didnt bother to make sure their Tweet was in good order. An error-free Tweet is not for the sake of the Tweeter. Its for the sake of the reader.

The second reason Scheduled Tweets are great is they give you a chance to improve what you wrote or, if some news or other public event has made your Scheduled Tweet obsolete, you have plenty of time to update it or even replace it with a more appropriate Tweet.

Even with TweetDecks excellent interface and useful features, you may still prefer to perform some actions on Internet Twitter. One of these is checking out the Home Page of a potential follower. You can also look at a Twitter users profile on TweetDeck but theres a reason the TweetDeck profile includes a link to Internet Twitters user profile. Clicking "Twitter page" in TweetDeck will take you to the users profile on Internet Twitter. This seems to be a tacit admission by TweetDeck that a users profile information is better viewed on Internet Twitter.

Its a good idea to check the user profile of every new or potential follower. Stick to new friends you believe will make loyal followers rather than those who are merely collecting followers.

CHAPTER FIVETo Follow or Not to Follow

To follow or not to follow, that is the question. Sometimes the question is "Do I want this person to follow me?"

What does this have to do with creating reader-friendly Tweets? Nothing directly. A good Tweet is a good Tweet whether or not it goes to a troll, someone who is not interested in what you have to say, or someone who looks forward to your messages.

If you dont care who reads or ignores your Tweets, why are you sending them in the first place? If you are just a "follower collector," what incentive do you have to write reader-friendly Tweets?

Your Tweets will have the best effect on people who are interested in what you say. These are the people you want as followers and theyll let you know they want to see more of your Tweets.

But before you decide to follow anyone, check these items on their Twitter Home Page:

1. How many total Tweets have they made? How does their Tweet total compare with the number of followers?

If a prospective "friend" has made fewer than two Tweets yet they have hundreds or even thousands of followers, ask yourself how they got so many followers by posting so few Tweets? Are they famous? Even if theyve made two or more Tweets, they may still have a disproportionate number of followers compared to the total Tweets theyve made. Someone like this may be a good candidate for blocking or at least not following back.

You should also check to see how frequently the prospective friend posts Tweets. You may find they havent made a Tweet in weeks or they post a Tweet every two minutes. With either extreme, you should consider not adding this person to your list of friends.

You may want to include a warning in your profile "Potential followers who have made fewer than two Tweets will be blocked." If a would-be follower has read this yet still attempts to follow, they must not take the warning seriously or hope youre not paying attention. Perhaps they havent even visited your Home Page nor read your profile. You should wonder why they want to follow you in the first place if they cant be bothered to check out who you are or what interests you. They might be a spammer (aka a troll), someone who sends disruptive messages or tries to overwhelm your account with dozens of identical, simultaneous Tweets.

A good rule of thumb is that most Twitter accounts will have more Tweets than followers. Simple logic says this is the usual case, although it may not always be so.

Celebrities and other famous people are an exception to this rule. Their mere presence on Twitter can gain tens of thousands of followers. "Hey, Im Johnny Superstar. Tweet me fans!" His first and last Tweet.

2. See how many of your followers are following the person you are checking out.

Internet Twitter shows you at a glance if anyone you know is following the account youre examining. If no one you know is following your would-be friend theres a good

chance you wont find their Tweets very interesting. Likely they wont enjoy yours. Some Tweeters collect followers like kids collect Pokemon Trading Cards. These people are completely uninterested in the contents of your Tweets. You are just one more number to add to their follower "score."

Chances are if you and a new follower share many of the same friends, youll have some interests in common. If none of your followers are following them, dont follow them back. You may even block them if you find anything else suspicious about their Home Page. If only five or six of your followers are on their account then you may or may not decide to follow them back, depending on the content and frequency of their Tweets.

3. Watch for Tweets with a pattern of deceit.Your "troll detector antennae" should go to high alert when you receive a Tweet

from a stranger containing just your user name along with a URL. Any message wont go much beyond "Hi" or "Check this out." If the senders avatar is the generic Twitter Egg or a picture of a "sexy" person or a smiling child, the sender may be trying to lure you to a dangerous website. Check their account to see how many Tweets they have made. If they have made zero Tweets or have zero followers, block and report them as spam. Dont click the URL!

The first time I received one of these fishy Tweets I clicked the link. My browser immediately took me to a pornographic website. In addition, Web of Trust, an add-on for my web browser, warned this was a dangerous Internet site. I closed the site at once, then blocked and reported the sender for spam. Clearly this unwelcome Tweeter was a troll, a mental dwarf who gets his thrills by enticing people to websites they dont wish to see or by causing trouble any other way their twisted little troll minds can conceive.

Once you block a spammer or troll you will never hear from that individual again under that account name. Often the same troll will contact you under a different username or it may be a troll copycat using the same trollish pattern. Theyre easy to spot. "Block and report" will become an automatic response.

Other troll attacks come in the form of private messages saying something like "You need to read this, really bad stuff being said about you," followed by a link to an Internet site. Or "LOL found this funny video of you i thought you might like to see." Or "Found you in this funny picture lol."

Messages like these appear to be coming from trusted followers. Sadly, some ill-intentioned trolls have hacked friendly Twitter accounts. The hackers are now sending out false private messages to trap the unwary into going to dangerous websites. When this happens you can either block the hacked account or you can try sending a message to the account holder telling them about the suspicious message you received under their name. If you dont receive a reply or you continue to get suspicious messages under this good Tweeters name, give serious thought to blocking the account.

Be a Troll Dodger. As much as possible work to keep your Twitter account a Troll Free Zone.

CHAPTER SIXGood & Bad Twitter Behavior

Face it, people can be very annoying. Make sure you are not one of these pests.Why should you care about good and bad Twitter etiquette? When you engage in

good Twitter behavior you will draw people to your reader-friendly Tweets. Bad Twitter behavior will drive people away, so the quality of your Tweets wont matter very much.

Following are some ideas about Good and Bad Twitter Behavior:

1. BAD: Dont save up or schedule a bunch of Tweets to appear one right after the other four or more times. Space them out!

Seeing someones avatar scroll by repeatedly in a short time is the same mistake a highway billboard advertiser would make by placing five nearly identical billboards within 50 feet of each other on the same stretch of road. A person might look at the first or second billboard, then their eyes will start to glaze over. They will decide to look elsewherehopefully straight ahead so they see where theyre going!

When you see an uninterrupted stream of Tweets with the same avatar, you probably wont read these Tweets any more than you would pay attention to an annoying TV commercial you have seen many times before.

The worst example of consecutive multiple Tweets that I personally experienced happened when someone posted fifteen Tweets to people she wanted to thank. Unfortunately my username appeared in each of her Tweets.

Dont misunderstand. Almost everyone likes to be thanked but after three or four consecutive "Thank yous" questions arise about the Tweeters sincerity. By the time someone reaches fifteen Tweets in a row, each showing an avatar of the same grinning face, you might start to think the sender is a lunatic on a crazed recruitment drive!

Before you join them in Chuckleland you may want to Tweet asking them to stop or you might want to click the block button and be instantly done with the whole problem. If you choose "block" they will disappear. Hopefully you will both be better off after this brief yet trying shared experience.

In another case, a man posted seven "Thank You" Tweets in a row. I posted a polite Tweet thanking him for his acknowledgements and asking him to please cut down on the multiple Tweets. He never replied, but did stop.

2. GOOD: Do thank someone who has decided to follow you.In almost every case when you receive an email saying @so-and-so has decided to

follow you, you are being honored. A complete stranger has decided they will give some of their valuable time to reading your Tweets. The least you can do is to send a thank-you. At a minimum say "Thank you for the follow!" If the new follower and you have something in common, you might also add something along the lines of "Its great to hear from a fellow Texan!"

Unfortunately there are times when you might not want to thank someone for following you nor do you want to follow them back. Why? He or she may be someone who is only interested in adding another digit to their horde of followers. From their past Tweets and the scarcity of Tweeters you both follow, you may decide this new follower has no real interest in you as a person. Youre just someone who will make their Twitter

statistics look better if you follow them back.Following someone with no interest in you as a person can have annoying

consequences. A follow-back to someone who is a huge fan of a particular teen heartthrob can lead to a flood of Tweets from other fans. These unsolicited messages announce they are now following you. They often explicitly state they expect you to follow them back. Enough! When you see a celebritys name in someones Twitter account, especially as part of their username and you have no interest in this celebrity avoid this Tweeter like the plague or at least like a bad case of flu.

3. GOOD: Thank people who retweet your Tweets, mention you, send you a message, or include your name in a list of people they recommend to others.

Most people like to be thanked. The next time youre at a store, thank the checkout person who hands you your receipt. Often youll get a surprised smile. You get the satisfaction of knowing you have made a hardworking persons day a little better. Why should you thank somebody you just paid money too? Its not their money. It belongs to the store owner. The only reason to thank them is just to be nice.

In Twitter, dont send a separate Tweet to each person you want to thank. This could be very time consuming. It will also take a lot of valuable screen space on other peoples computers and smartphones.

Instead, after you have collected seven or so people you want to thank, post a new Tweet with the message "Thanks for RTs, mentions, messages, FFs!" followed by the @usernames of the seven people you want to thank. By starting the Tweet with a message "covering all bases" most Tweeters will be satisfied to know you have recognized them for doing something thoughtful.

I have a confession to make. Please dont take out the rubber hose. Im confessing of my own free will. When I was new to Twitter I over thanked some people. No matter what they had Tweeted to me ("Thank you." "Youre welcome.") I would thank them for their message. The situation became like the old joke: "Pete and Repete were sitting in a boat. Pete fell overboard. Who was left in the boat?" The answer is "Repete," at which point the joker tells the whole story over again. Thanking someone for their "thank you" also becomes something like the old cartoon where the characters went round and round saying "After you, Alphonse." "No, after you, my dear Gaston." If both you and the other Tweeter are on automatic pilot, you could be re-thanking each other for hours!

How do you avoid this? Pay attention. If someone sends a "thank you" Tweet, simply respond as soon as possible with a short "Youre very welcome!" or "YVW." Dont get trapped in a tedious and ridiculous thank-you cycle.

As mentioned earlier, Twitter provides a surefire way to stop someones bad Twitter behavior. In the real world before computers, mobsters would make enemies vanish without a trace. In Twitter, the legal equivalent to this is called the "block."

When you block a pesky or malicious Tweeter they vanish in the sense that they can no longer see you or your Tweets. Mercifully you can no longer see theirs. Its as if they have become unpersons who now exist only in the thickening mists of increasingly-distant and not especially pleasant memories.

CHAPTER SEVENFocusing Your Twitter Account

Once you get into the habit of writing reader-friendly Tweets, your taste in the Tweets you enjoy receiving from others is likely to evolve. You have chosen to receive all the Tweets of all the people you are following. You undoubtedly find some of these friends consistently send more interesting Tweets than others. Private lists offer a way for you to control whose Tweets actually appear on your screen.

Twitters Help Center defines lists as "Curated groups of other Twitter users. Used to tie specific individuals into a group on your Twitter account." Because there are many ways to access Twitter the Internet, desktop programs, smartphone applications Im not going to try to explain here how you create a list, how you add a Twitter user to a list, nor how you remove someone from a list. If youre a longtime Twitter user, you probably already know how to do this, but if youre fairly new to Twitter and know little about setting up lists, you will need to search the Help feature of the particular way you are using Twitter. Read how to use "lists" and, more specifically, private lists.

Because Twitter has set a limit of 500 accounts for every list you create, you may eventually want to create several. Soon after I joined Twitter, I created three private lists and gave them the names of "Good," "Better," and "Best." I had the wrongheaded idea that I could place friends on one of these three lists based on how much I liked their Tweets. I quickly learned that some Tweeters have better days than others. A friend I placed on the "Good" list one day might later prove they fully deserved to be on the "Best" list. My advice to you is to create private lists one at a time. What you name them is unimportant, except you should not place a number in the name. Make them private lists. The accounts on a public list can be seen by others. The accounts on a private list cannot.

Place a few friends whose Tweets you enjoy on your private list every day. These should be people who write Tweets that you especially enjoy. When the number of friends on your first list reaches 500, you wont be able to place anyone else on it. Either remove a few people from the list to make room for more new names, or create another private list to which you can add more friends.

Once you have set up some private lists you can use them to focus your attention on the Tweeters you enjoy hearing from the most. TweetDeck, for example, allows me to view all three of my private lists in three separate columns at the same time. With TweetDeck you can also add a column that includes "All Friends" so you can watch everyone, including those who have not been assigned a private list. With Internet Twitter you can watch the Tweets of everyone flow by or you can choose to limit the Tweet flow to those who are on a particular private list.

There are a number of ways to use lists to organize your Twitter account. If you wish, you could even create a list of spammers. Personally I prefer to block spammers. They make me nervous, and I dont want them reading my Tweets or sending me messages. But you might choose instead to put spammers on a public list to expose them to your whole Twitter community. As stated earlier, public lists on Twitter can be viewed by anyone. When you are looking at another Tweeters Home Page, you can check the lists that they are following and the lists that are following them. You can then choose to subscribe to any or all of these lists.

You could also create a public or private list of famous people. Many of these people are infrequent Tweeters. But at any given time, some of them are Tweeting. When they are all together on one list, youll have a celebrity Tweet stream that makes it much more likely you wont miss any of their messages.

To wrap it up, private and public lists provide an easy way to organize accounts you want to view on Twitter. By using lists to concentrate on Tweets from your favorite Twitter friends, you can pick up good writing tips and techniques from their Tweets, unclutter your screen, and increase your overall enjoyment of Twitter.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Conclusion

Hopefully the idea of reader-friendly Tweets will catch on. It will make Twitter a more pleasant experience for everyone.

In addition to writing reader-friendly Tweets, the other advice in "Tweet Like an Eagle" will help create a more inviting atmosphere in which to present your reader-friendly Tweets.

Reader-friendly Tweets will help reduce "Twitter shock" for new Tweeters. Every Twitter member should be in favor of a steady stream of new members. Many of these new people may decide to follow you. It would be a shame if a new Tweeter decided to stop Tweeting because most of the messages he or she saw were interrupted by Twitter symbols they dont yet understand.

Heres a summary of the advice in "Tweet Like an Eagle":

1. Have an eye-catching avatar.2. Start every Tweet with your message. Leave "Twitter speak" items at the end

of your Tweet.3. Take advantage of recommended Internet sites to search for "the perfect

word." Some sites will also help you keep track of Twitter account stats.4. Use Scheduled Tweets to cut down on typographical errors, improve your

Tweets before they are due to be posted, and to make sure your Tweets are timely.5. Be careful who you follow or allow to follow you so you can avoid trolls and

spammers. You want to build up a list of loyal followers who are truly interested in your Tweets.

6. Follow the rules of good Twitter etiquette so your reader-friendly Tweets actually get read.

7. Use private lists to control whose Tweets actually appear on your computer screen.

Every rule has its exceptions. But give a try to as many of these ideas as you can, especially the rule about starting your Tweets with an uninterrupted message and placing all the links at the end.

You may begin to notice more of your Tweets are being retweeted and more people are sending you messages. Hopefully you will also experience a steady increase in new followers. If you keep track of your statistics using one of the sites mentioned earlier, you can find out for sure if your account is growing, stagnating or decreasing.

Have fun! With the help of "Tweet Like an Eagle," may your Tweets evolve from unassuming little bluebird chirps to majestic Eagle Tweets!

# # #

About the author:

D. Arthur Watson and David A. Watson are the same person, i.e. me. I prefer to use D. Arthur Watson for my writings and David A. Watson for all other purposes. I was born in Chicago but grew up in New Jersey. I graduated from Lehigh University in

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1965 with a BA in English Literature. My writing career began in 1968 as a copywriter for Prentice-Hall Publishers when it

was located in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. In 1970, I began work as a copywriter in the Book Club Division of Doubleday & Company in Garden City, New York, where I later became Editor of the Science Fiction Book Club. In 1974 I moved to Alabama to work as a direct mail fundraising copywriter for a nonprofit organization. I retired in 2003 and have been here ever since.

In 2010, Twitter reignited my interest in writing. The discipline of the 140-character limit is a marvelous teacher. My writing interests for the future include novels, flash fiction and the occasional poem.

Connect with Me Online:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ - !/xunezSmashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/DAWatson