When you are only given 140 characters (including spaces) to get your message across, it’s easy to be tempted to purposefully misspell words in order to save space.  Don’t do it!  Do you want to look like a tween with their first cell phone or a legitimate business?

HERE ARE SOME WAYS TO KEEP YOUR TWEETS SHORT AND IN GOOD SHAPE:

Keep your message concise. 

It will help to tweet only one idea at a time so you don’t get bogged down trying to relay too much information at once.  Are there too many details surrounding your message to fit into one idea? See the next section.

Choose a hashtag that overarches your subject.

Including a unique subject-specific hashtag with each idea relating to your message helps link those separate tweets together. This way, your followers can easily get more information about your subject by clicking on the hashtag.

For example, if you are hosting a fundraising event with a lot of complicated details surrounding it, you might choose “#OrganizationBenefit2014″ as your unique hashtag, and chug out the following tweets:

“This year’s #OrganizationBenefit2014 will be held @ThisHotel on Dec. 1st”

“Thank you to our guests of honor @ThisPerson and @ThatPerson | #OrganizationBenefit2014″

“Don’t forget to RSVP for #OrganizationBenefit2014 by Nov. 13th!”

Your followers would be able to click on the #OrganizationBenefit2014 attached to just one of those tweets, and see all three of the tweets containing information about your event!

Confused about using the “@” symbol? Click here.

Using widely accepted abbreviations is OK.

While you don’t want to misspell intentionally; it is okay to widely accepted twitter lingo and abbreviations (Example: LOL and BTW).  It is also okay to use words like acct for account, dept for department, or something similar.

Definitely stay away from trying to shorten words into something like wat, dus, rite, lern, imma, cos, etc.  Don’t know what any of those words are trying to say?  Neither will your followers!

Finally, be aware of common mistakes. 

There are many people who LOVE to correct them.  Know the difference between their, there, and they’re as well as your and you’re.  Occasionally, it will happen; you will spell something wrong in a tweet.  Don’t panic.  If you catch it, quickly delete your tweet, fix it, and tweet it again.  If someone else catches it, take it in stride and make a joke about it.  Admitting your mistake and not taking it too personally will make you appear human and approachable.