Think Before You Tweet: 5 Questions to Ask Before Posting

Tweet via Scott Stratten of Unmarketing.

Social media marketing and networking means sharing content with your community or prospective members of it. Share well and you have a happy community that you can rely on to help you with your business, and count on when needed.  Share poorly constructed tweets, and you end up with no one that will want to read your uninteresting micro posts.

Here are a few questions you should ask before sharing anything on Twitter: 

1. Will anyone in the community find this useful or be offended by it? One thing that I personally am very cautious about is making sure I don't post insensitive or vulgar material on Twitter. You should do the same.

2. Who will enjoy it?  Content that you share on social media doesn't have to be relevant to everyone in the community all the time, but should interest some of your following.



3. What about this content will they enjoy? If you want more followers, post content that they will enjoy. Don't be shy though, show some of your personality in your tweets.

4. How likely is the content to start a discussion and stimulate reactions? We've all seen a "great" PR move someone does for their audience to start a discussion or stimulate reactions, i.e., Miley Cyrus at the 2013 MTV VMA's (yes, I went there).

If that's the content you want shared, well go for it (I wouldn't). In short, share shareable content you'd be proud of your momma seeing.

5. Is the content produced by you or another source? Realization: you are not Albert Einstein or Abraham Lincoln. Don't try to impersonate and steal someone else's blog posts, tweets, etc. That being said, always attribute if you do share content from others. Shoot, if you know the author's Twitter handle, tag them in it. Everyone likes to know that you shared their hard work.