How Tweetable Are Your Online Titles?

If you aren’t leveraging Twitter to spread your online message, then your PR campaign may already be in trouble.

Consider the following:

The other day I ran across an excellent article on a business blog that I read sometimes. I thought that the material was interesting and helpful, so I decided to share the information with some of my friends and colleagues via Twitter.

That’s where I ran into trouble. There were two problems:

• First, I attempted to cut and paste the URL into my tweet, but I couldn’t do it because the rather descriptive title of the article exceeded the 140-character limit. (Yes, I’m aware that I could have gone to a third site such as like TinyURL.com or bit.ly and gotten a much shorter link, but like most readers, I’m a bit lazy. Also, depending on the audience, many readers are aware of the URL shortening sites.)
• Next, I looked for a Tweet button on the article itself (there are many of these, with TweetMeme being one of the most popular. Usually, a Tweet button has URL shortening built into it. Unfortunately, the article didn’t have a Tweet button either.
• Finally, I did what most other blog readers would probably do when faced with a similar situation – I left the article, with its excellent material, unshared.

I do know this, if I found it difficult to share his material, other readers would probably face similar difficulties. Who knows how many additional potential customers could have been reached?

That particular business blogger had missed a crucial opportunity to spread their message. They probably don’t even realize the extent of their loss, because who can fully measure lost opportunity?

I wonder how many other business (and even PR firms) have made the same mistake when posting information online?

Twitter, if you’re not familiar with it, is the popular online microblogging tool that allows you to share just about anything as long as you can say it in 140 characters or less.

Since its origin in 2006, Twitter has quickly become one of the fastest growing Social Media sites. The number of users is projected to be over 18 million by the end of 2009 (via Mashable). Compare that with Facebook, which reportedly has over 300 Million Users (via TechCrunch)and you can see that, while smaller in size, Twitter is still significant.

What tools and techniques do you use online to make your information more accessible to social media tools?

Share your ideas in the comments.