If you aspire to a writing career, you need to join Twitter.
Why?
Twitter forces you to write tight.
I love the challenge of paring several paragraphs into one or two enticing sentences of 140 characters or less (including hyperlinks).
I’ve just launched a Twitter account for my client, the Florida Christian Writers Conference (http://twitter.com/flwritersconf). My first challenge was to write a profile; Twitter allows a whopping 160 characters for that.
I worked off the following description of the conference:
The Florida Christian Writers Conference is celebrating 23 years as part of the Christian publishing industry. This is an annual conference held at the Lake Yale Conference Center near Leesburg in central Florida. The conference is designed to be inspirational, instructive, and provide marketing opportunities for every level of writing skill, beginner through advanced. Our faculty and staff are eager to help you with your current writing projects – review manuscripts, make suggestions regarding marketability, give brief written critiques and are available to registrants during the conference. Our attendance is usually 250+ with a faculty of 70 made up of freelance writers, editors and agents.
Here are my drafts of the profile:
Draft #1
The 23rd annual Florida Christian Writers Conference is March 3-7, 2010 at the Lake Yale Conference Center near Leesburg, FL. Inspirational and instructive for every level of writing skill.
189 characters. Ouch. 29 characters too long! Time to start chopping unnecessary words.
Draft #2
Florida Christian Writers Conference – March 3-7, 2010 at the Lake Yale Conference Center near Leesburg. Inspirational and instructive for every level of writing skill.
170 characters. So close! Gotta axe Leesburg; people can go to the conference Web site to find out where Lake Yale is (it’s about a 1 ½ hour drive from Orlando, in case you’re wondering).
Draft #3
Florida Christian Writers Conference – March 3-7, 2010 at the Lake Yale Conference Center. Inspirational and instructive for every level of writing skill.
156 characters. Success! The basics are in place, but it’s not too enticing. Here’s the method to my madness:
- I figured I needed to use the full conference name in the profile since the account name is @FLWritersConf (Twitter limits the length of account names, too).
- I thought it was important to include the conference dates and location, so visitors will get critical info at a glance.
- The last sentence needs work. But I wrote the profile at 3:05 a.m. and I had no brain cells left.
Any suggestions for how to spice it up? I’m going to be fine-tuning the profile during the next couple of days.
BONUS TIP
Here’s a bonus tip for sneaking additional words into your Twitter bio: create a custom background at Twitbacks.com (the Florida Christian Writers Conference uses a Twitbacks background). It’s free; it’s quick; it’s easy, and it gives you an extra 200 or so characters to tell your story. A godsend for wordy writers!
Related articles:
- How to Make Google Love Your Twitter Profile
- How to Create Your Internet Profile (from Bright Ideas Blogzine, June 2009)
