The 7 Step Evolution of the Perfect Tweet
Step 1. Get my initial thought down… I want to talk about the 1 Wired Wish contest… I want a retweet element… I want to talk about the prize:
Tell us your 1 Wired Wish for a chance at a $10,000 prize package. (pls RT for a chance at an iPod touch) URL
Step 2. Shorten the $10,000 to $10k to save some space… Remove parentheses as they aren’t needed:
Tell us your 1 Wired Wish for a chance at a $10k prize package. pls RT for a chance at an iPod touch URL
Step 3. Since the prize money is pretty huge, I want to lead with $10k. Idea to go with alliteration (geek gear grabs) for effect:
$10k in geek gear up for grabs. Tell us your 1 Wired Wish. Pls RT for a chance at an iPod touch URL
Step 4. Try it with “10 grand” instead of $10k to add another “g” in there, then shorten to 10Gs. Add caps on the G’s for effect:
10Gs in Geek Gear up for Grabs. Tell us your 1 Wired Wish. Pls RT for a chance at an iPod touch URL
Step 5. I thought the fact that the iPod was Wired-engraved was cool, so I added that. Didn’t want to, but removed the word “please.” Felt that this wasn’t so much asking a favor (please retweet this) as a command (you need to retweet this for the chance to win).
10Gs in Geek Gear up for Grabs. Tell us your 1 Wired Wish. RT for a chance at Wired-engraved iPod touch
Step 6. Need some more space, so change “for” to “4″ and “to win” to “2win.” Added caps on WIRED. Added url to see how long that was. Definitely made sure there was room to reweet… wasn’t just that we want people to retweet… it was an essential part of this. Test everything a few times.
10Gs in Geek Gear up 4 Grabs. Tell us your 1 Wired Wish. RT for a chance 2win WIRED-engraved iPod touch http://ow.ly/Nbsf
Step 7. Make sure to do the follow-up and keep your promise. The next day, picked a winner that had retweeted it and reached out to him. Sent him his prize. He retweeted that he won.
End result was a very good number of clicks and retweets.
BTW… the contest goes until Feb 2, 2010, so hey… Enter to win $10,000 from Wired.

Key Takeaways
- Having a huge audience was a little bit daunting at first, but I quickly settled in and found my voice while staying true to the Wired brand. Know your limitations and just take a little more time.
- Don’t be afraid to go through a few rounds of copy.
- I had one major change in talking about twitter and social media. The selling points I was telling people all year were: It’s free, it works (we’re getting more traffic), it’s fun and interactive, it doesn’t take a lot of time.
Well, I’m ready to rehash that last point a bit. Yes, you can quickly find a story and tweet it in a minute. However, I found myself taking more time looking for the breaking trend or hot story, time making sure it was accurate and hadn’t been mentioned before, more time crafting the tweet and testing it, and more time analyzing (ok, obsessing a bit) over all the cool stats you can glean from what you’re doing). So maybe it doesn’t take a TON of time, but let’s just say you can spend a lot of time on it if you let it.