7 Unexpected Ways To Improve Your Writing With Twitter

Home > Blog > Use Social Media > 7 Unexpected Ways To Improve Your Writing With Twitter

Imagine a place where you could easily improve your writing by publishing 30, 40 or 50 blog posts a day.

In this place, you’d automatically receive individual feedback for each blog post on whether it touched base with your readers.

You’d be sure that every one of your blog posts would be read, and some of them would be widely shared.

Each blog post you write in this place improves your writing.

Such a place exists and, chances are, you already hang out there.

Twitter launched in 2006, at the dawn of the golden age of blogging. Nowadays, it’s known as a social network, but back then Twitter was a microblogging service. Twitter made sense to bloggers because, in simple terms, it was a blogging platform where blog posts had to be squeezed into 140 characters.

Twitter is a blogging platform and a place to improve your writing skills.

As a writer, you can use Twitter for all of the following.

1. Practice your writing.

Twitter is a writer’s sandbox. You can be creative, try out new things, see what works and what doesn’t. Because each update is so tiny and transient, your mistakes are quickly forgotten. But when you do something that resonates with your readers, it can reach thousands or hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of minutes.

Some writers use Twitter to share micropoems. (Check out these 100 little Twitter poems, or search Twitter for the #sixwords hashtag). Others use it to tell stories from their day or promote their work.

2. Network with other writers

Twitter is known as a social network because it’s fantastic for networking. You can use it to talk directly with all kinds of writers from established old school writers (Neil Gaiman, Paulo Coelho, Alain de Botton) to successful self published writers (Sean Platt, Joanna Penn, Ali Luke) to superstar bloggers (Jeff Goins, Danny Iny, Mary Jaksch).

Perhaps most important of all are the thousands of all-around friendly writers and editors who are still on the journey and are happy to chat, ask for feedback on their writing, and give feedback on yours. Some of my favorites are John Wiswell, Amanda Socci and Jackie Pearce.

As you network with other writers, you’ll discover writing tips, new writing challenges, and writing communities where you’ll feel right at home.

3. Keep your writing concise

“Eliminate the non-essential” is Write to Done’s advice on keeping your writing concise.

Twitter gives you only 140 characters to play with, so it squeezes the excess pith from your words, leaving only the nourishing juice. You’re forced to write concisely, to discard the ore and share only the gold.

4. Track your results

I know many writers prefer the romance of poetry and stories to the hard, concrete facts of numbers and raw data.

Yet to succeed as a professional writer, you must take a keen interest in numbers. How many dollars you’re earning. How many books you’ve sold. How many readers are subscribed to your blog.

Twitter allows you to track the success of your writing in hard numbers. You can see whether your follower count is growing, whether your tweets are being shared, and (using simple web apps such as Buffer) whether people are clicking the links you share.

If your follower count is flat-lining and your links aren’t being clicked, that’s useful feedback, and you can start to do things differently.

5. Find out what your readers want

One way of attracting more readers is knowing what your readers want. The simplest way to do this is to ask them, and Twitter provides the perfect platform to fire out questions to your readers.

Also, take note which tweets are most popular with your followers – either through retweets, replies, or clicking the link you shared. When readers share or reply to your tweets, they’re saying “More like this, please”.

6. Learn what entices

In the web age, writing is copywriting. And copywriting means attracting attention.

Twitter, with its built-in systems for tracking results, is ideal for learning what gets attention and what gets ignored. In particular, you can use Twitter to practice writing headlines that get the most clicks. The better you are at writing neck snapping headlines, the more readers you’ll attract to your blog posts, ebooks, and articles.

7. Improve your writing with creative inspiration and ideas

Twitter is a playground of ideas. Everywhere you look, you’ll find ideas for stories to tell, research to pursue, and people you could interview for your next article.

Whenever you feel stuck for writing ideas, turn to Twitter. In just a few minutes you’ll find an idea or story angle that excites you and you want to pursue.

So what are you waiting for? If you’ve yet to sign up to Twitter, or you’ve allowed your Twitter account to fade away into zombie status, get started today!

 

About the author:

David Masters teaches you how to buzz up your social media soul at Social Caffeine. Come on over and join the party.

 

RECENT POSTS

How To Launch A Writing Career: 10 Tips For Success

Many creatives want to launch a writing career, but taking the steps to do so is a frequent roadblock. The good news is, if you want to launch a writing career and are committed to doing so, you’re likely to succeed.  Of course, the definition of success is...

6 Book Introduction Examples: Helpful Secrets To Compelling Intros

The topic of book introduction examples is vital to dive into due to their influence on readers’ mindset. How a reader feels when he or she starts chapter one and page one of your manuscript impacts how they respond to your writing. When you’ve spent weeks, months, or...

5 Tips To Write Faster: Finish Your Book In Record Time

Did you know that if you want to write faster than the average typist (40 words per minute) there are actionable steps you can take to do so? Whether you are working on typing out your debut novel or have been in the game for years, there’s always an opportunity to...

Vision Boards For Writers: 3 Ways To Achieve Your Dreams

Vision boards are more than just a fun activity to engage in at the start of a new year or season. While vision boards are often designed to be aesthetically pleasing and can be a relaxing activity, they actually can be more helpful to your writing dreams than you...

JOIN OVER 2 MILLION READERS

WANT YOUR NEXT BOOK TO BE A BESTSELLER?

Then you need KDP Rocket – the killer advantage of pro authors.

Related Posts

5 Creative Ways to Use Snapchat for Writers

5 Creative Ways to Use Snapchat for Writers

Are you a writer that’s trying to make full use of Snapchat, but have no idea how to get that done? Snapchat is a great tool that has a lot of functionality and taking full advantage of that is a no-brainer. Even if you’re a beginner with Snapchat you can get a lot of...

About The Author

David Masters

David Masters is a writer, storyteller, blogger, and amateur photographer. Follow fragments of his life on Twitter.

Latest Posts

How to Find Freelance Writing Work (2024 Guide)

How to Find Freelance Writing Work (2024 Guide)

Freelance writing is a great way to earn some extra money on the side. But as you may discover once you get a foothold in the industry, it’s more than possible to turn it into a full-time job and lifelong career. There are some hurdles that you have to overcome,...

31 Ways to Find Inspiration for Your Writing

31 Ways to Find Inspiration for Your Writing

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. - Jack London No matter how much you love writing, there will always be days when you need inspiration from one muse or another. In fact, I would argue that inspiration is not just a desirable...