I distinctly remember in my tenth grade grammar class our teacher talked about deadwood. Well, not actually the teacher talking about it, but the example that was given. Every morning, we would come into class and given a task to complete that related to the day’s lesson. That day’s lesson was Deadwood, which is simply eliminating needless things from your writing. Many of the smartest kids in class tried two and three times to rewrite one particular sentence, paring it down, word after word. However, there was only one person in the class who was successful at the task. It just happened to be the quiet one. The one who generally said the least in class. She pared the sentence down to a mere three words.
Now, anyone who’s ever met me knows I’m not a man of few words. And trust me, for someone who can talk for hours about anything, eliminating deadwood can be difficult. Twitter is a great platform for people like myself for cutting down the nonsense. After all, you only have 140 characters to make your point. I know that I’ve rewritten tweets three to four times just to pare it down to 140 characters.
Please don’t mistake being brief with using “leet speak” or texting language. I know plenty of people who are able to get their point across without requiring Urban Dictionary. In the long run, it will make you more respected and help you build a quality following on Twitter.
By learning how be brief, you also learn what is really important about what you’re trying to say. Sometimes it’s important to just include what happened and not the who/why/how. Leaving out some details is perfectly fine. People will still get the gist of what you’re trying to tell them. If people want to know the details, more likely than not, they will reply back to you and ask.
Being brief can also add value to you without you knowing it. While my classmate didn’t speak much, when she did speak, we listened to what she had to say. We valued her opinion more since she chose her words and comments very sparingly. The same can happen on Twitter and other social networks. I know that when I scan my Twitter feed, I’m always looking for those few people who rarely post. Those people generally tend to post very interesting comments or articles.
And I would be remised if I left out those who are brief, but post twenty and thirty tweets a day. Yes, there are those people who generally post a lot, but have great links, full of content, with a simple tagline. @TimMoore is a great example of this. Many retweets from @Mashable and other great news sources as well as great quotes, I swear he never uses more than 120 characters, but is a constant presence in my feed.
So I ask you this: Who in your feed right now is a great example of being brief? Who’s tweets convey their points clearly and concisely?