As a community manager a lot of my job is writing content for Twitter. Let me tell you – for those of you who don’t also tweet obsessively throughout the day – being engaging and entertaining in 140 characters day in and day out can be difficult. Add in a client who is super sensitive about grammar and you have a recipe for boring, mundane tweets and a lot of frustrated community managers! Fortunately for all you newbie Tweeters out there, here are a few tricks you should know to turn that paragraph of a statement into a short and sweet tweet.

1. Pick a short handle – I can’t stress this enough. When you first consider setting up a Twitter account for your brand, come up with the shortest possible handle. If you have a twitter handle that is really long you’re pretty much screwing yourself over each time you tweet because it’ll be hard for your followers to RT your message or quote it and add in their response. Pick the shortest, most appropriate handle possible and you’ll increase the possibility for your followers to spread your message to their networks.

2. Link Shortening – This is a no brainer and the new Twitter even does it for you, but sometimes it doesn’t shorten enough. If you don’t use HootSuite (which has its own ow.ly shortener), my personal favorite is bit.ly because it’s quick, easy and you can track the number of clicks your link gets, which is always a nice little bonus.

3. Minimize your punctuation marks – You can always spot a newbie Twitter user because you’ll usually see proper use of punctuation marks. Yes it may be grammatically incorrect, but in Twitter world people are used to seeing (and using) limited-to-no grammar and that certainly includes punctuation marks. So forgo that second, third and fourth exclamation point, your audience understood your excitement with just the first one.

4. Reduce your adjective use – Yes, we know your product is awesome, amazing and brilliant, but for Twitter’s sake pick your favorite adjective and stick with it. If you’re trying to shorten a tweet, chances are there’s an adjective in there you can take out to simplify – and shorten! – your sentence.

5. And vs. & – When it comes to “and” versus the ampersand character symbol “&” it really is a personal choice or brand standard. I’ve seen brands exclusively  use “and,” others “&” and yet others both. Personally, if you have the space, spell out “and,” but if you’re trying to reduce the length, don’t be afraid of the ampersand!

6. Abbreviations – If you’re really in a tight jam and you need to cut more characters, a last resort is abbreviating common words. It’s a bit ugly and if you abbreviate too much no one will know what you’re saying, but there are a few common abbreviations almost any Twitter user will understand:

with = use “w” or “w/”

please = pls

tomorrow = “tom” or “tmrw”

because = “bc” or “b/c”

before = b4

(Want a longer list of commonly abbreviated words on Twitter? See this list!)

In the end, shortening your well-written tweet comes down to creativity, writing skills and messaging. You have to decide what you are willing to sacrifice in order to get your message out there among the masses. There are no hard or fast rules, but the trick is to figure out what your solution will be when you need to shorten Tweets and be consistent. Don’t start using random abbreviations your audience has never seen before because trust me, they’ll pick up on the change. And of course if all else fails, there is one final last resort — splitting your tweet into two and using “…cont.” at the end and beginning of each tweet. Of course you could always just scrap that tweet and go back to the drawing board and try to write something completely different, and there’s no shame in that.

Got a tweet shortening technique you’d like to share with the class? Hit the comments and let me know or tweet us @Affinitive!

Apparently I was a good girl this year because Santa brought me a very nice present – a Kindle Fire! The hot new e-reader from Amazon is the latest in readers that also double as tablets. While it can easily be compared to the iPad, I prefer this little gadget because of its size and shape. It’s more fun reading young adult novels on the Fire than the iPad and I think most avid readers would agree with me on that one. While you can probably do a lot more on your iPad than your Kindle, let me just say that as a book community manager, the Kindle Fire is absolutely 100% the best device for me.

Why is this the best device for a book blog or community manager? Beyond the whole e-reading aspect, here are the apps that make this my recommended device:

HootSuite app – I often find myself creating Twitter and Facebook content when I’m in the middle of reading a book. Now with the Kindle Fire, I can schedule updates via HootSuite as I’m reading books and check up teen readers’ feeds to confirm what I know.

IndieBound Reader – My New Year’s resolution is to support small businesses as much as possible, which is hard to do when you buy all your e-books from an online site like Amazon. But never fear, the IndieBound Reader app – courtesy of Android- is here!

With this app, you can download e-books from Google Books from participating independent bookstores. While they may not have as many deals as Amazon or as wide a selection, you’re still supporting locally owned bookstores and giving back to the community.

Downloading this app and other Android apps is easy. Just follow these instructions to unlock your Kindle Fire. To get the IndieBound Reader app, open up “Silk” on your Fire and go to this page, click download, and finish the installation instructions from the link above and you’re done!

GetGlue and GoodReads – Use GetGlue to check into the books you’re reading, and GoodReads to keep track of your progress. I use both for different reasons, but if there’s one thing I know, readers LOVE displaying their reading progress. Both these apps are good for keeping up with friends and community members on their reading status while slyly showing off your own.

Tumblr – More and more book blogs and publishers are extending their reach via Tumblr. From what I’ve seen, most book-minded people use it for graphics or reviews and less as actual blogs, but that doesn’t make it any less fun or entertaining.

Box.net – We here at Affinitive just recently moved our files over to Box.net and I was thrilled to learn that there’s a Box app for the Kindle. Now I have no excuse to get my work done. Use it to upload and store your files, images, and whatever else you need. I like using it to store photos or documents that I later upload to my Tumblr.

StumbleUpon – I love discovering new book blogs or communities and sometimes the best way to do that is to just surf the web. There’s no better tool for mindless web surfing than Stumble Upon. Using the keyword settings, now I can aimlessly explore and browse books, blogs and publishers’ websites inbetween reading sessions.

That’s it for me, but I’d love to hear what apps you’re downloading to your Fires. Share in the comments!

Twitter is a wordsmith’s best friend, so it’s no surprise that authors flock to the micro-social networking service to help launch their books. While most book launch campaigns on Twitter go under the radar, every once in awhile a hashtag will hit it big, or at least be so interesting that you can’t help give it some props. There are no hard or fast rules when it comes to successfully building awareness about a book through Twitter, but by looking at two recent examples, we can glean some insights on how to run a successful Twitter campaign.

ROUTE #1 – Connect with the people

Back in September, British author (and Twitter addict with over 1 million followers) Lord Alan Sugar took to Twitter to launch his new ebook The Way I See It, a non-fiction anthology of his rants and ravings about everything. Using the hashtag #thewayiseeit, he called upon his followers to use the hashtag to tweet their rants at him so he could use them to sign copies of his book. For a more in-depth look at the campaign that was considered “the first Twitter book signing” watch the brief video below.

So why did this work? For starters, the author already had a built in audience – which always helps – but what he asked Tweeps to do was already a natural extension of something that happens on Twitter – ranting. That’s it. All he wanted was for people to use the hashtag and to Tweet their rants in 140 characters or less.

The results? Within 24 hours there was a grand total of 350,000 tweets using that hashtag and over 2,500 mentioned Lord Sugar directly. For more, read this article. 

Route #2 – Be Creative

When in doubt, do something funny. Twitter is a place where witty people come together to show how funny they can be. Why? People love it. So it was no surprise that the Random House Twitter campaign for the release of their zombie apocalypse book Zone One by Colson Whitehead was a success.

Utilizing the hashtag #RHZombies, Random House and ALL of their imprints took to Twitter to broadcast the publisher-wide zombie attack.

In total, the hashtag #RHZombies was used 211 times and even noted for it’s cleverness in some major book blogs like GalleyCat and BookRiot.

So, my advice for your soon-to-be-published book? Get your publisher involved! The Twitter campaign for Zone One was led by publishers, who on average usually have more followers and Klout. Getting them to launch a hashtag campaign on your behalf is always a great starting point.

If you aren’t as lucky to have the backing of a big name publisher or are self-publishing,  go the Alan Sugar route and make your hashtag relevant to the world. Be creative but simple. Make sure your hashtag is short enough so people can incorporate it into their own tweets (space is prime real estate!) but creative so that it will incite others to participate in the conversation.

BlueFly

Bluefly’s unique layout combines design elements from both the welcome tab and avatar. I particularly love the way it draws your eye from the avatar on the left to the like button on the right.  It’s stylish, it’s fun and it completely mirrors the company’s branding.

Champion

This is bold and definitely “in your face” design. Champion is using the oft seen technique of displaying the call to action OVER the content, giving potential fans a sneak peek at content and enticing them further to “like” the page.

Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson’s call to action is the tried and true method of displaying the current number of fans. While this isn’t anything new,  Sony Ericsson’s is the best one I’ve seen so far. I particularly like that the call to action with fan counter is supported by the locked message below it.

Reebok

Bold. Bright. Impossible to miss or ignore. Reebok gets an A+ for assertiveness!

Target

Another strong, bold design – similar to Reebok’s but less assertive. However, this still works really well for Target. I’m also a big fan of the cute tagline “If you like Target, throw your thumb in the air.” Nice touch!

Nutella

While not as bold as other designs in this  post, I have to give Nutella props for creativity and great aesthetics. Super fun and perfect for their branding, this call to action prompt is perfect for Nutella.

Carnival Cruises

What Carnival does well here is incorporating great visual tricks. Notice how your eye – no matter where you look – is drawn up to the ”like” button. While some of the colors are a little recessive and could use some punch, overall this is an effective and creative call to action.

What are your favorite examples of effective “like us” design? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Share them below in the comments or email me at margot@beaffinitive.com.

When you are the voice of a brand, either through a blog, Twitter or Facebook, it is important to make sure that the voice is unique, polished and genuine. When interacting directly with a consumer, you need to make sure that the brand sounds like someone the consumer can trust, be friends with. You’re representing a brand, so if that brand were a person, what sort of characteristics would he/she exhibit? How would this person sound, literally?

I find that it is immensely helpful when trying to mold the voice of a brand to create a voice sheet and refer to it when blogging, tweeting or updating the Facebook status. When creating a voice sheet, think of the target consumer and try to match your voice to theirs—it would be best to read Tweets, status updates and blog posts that your target demographic has written to gain a better understanding of the type of language your consumer uses. Here are some things your voice sheet should include:

• Adjectives – List of adjectives your target commonly uses
• Key Phrases – List of key phrases or expressions used by your target
• Tone – What is the overall tone of your voice? (Example: Intelligent, humorous, approachable, youthful, worldly, etc.)
• Writing Style – When writing, should grammar be more formal or laid-back?

Remember, the key to strong, fruitful interactions with the consumer is developing an authentic voice that people will come to recognize, trust and love.