#Proofing: 6 steps for ensuring quality Tweets

By Nick Reese
Best practices
Concentrated blonde female copywriter working on creative task at the cafe.

The speed of Twitter is beyond comparison. A Tweet can be sent, shared, and engaged with around the world just seconds after it was posted. Meanwhile, it’s easy to feel like you’ve fallen off the map if your followers haven’t heard from you in the last few hours.

That means the fastest Tweeter wins, right? Not necessarily. While being the first to break news or share a reaction is a point of pride for many people on Twitter, for brands it is more important to take time to proof your work and make sure every Tweet conveys the quality your brand stands for.

Here’s a checklist of things to consider before you send a Tweet:

Proof your post

Never dash off a quick post and publish it without giving it a thorough proofing. To ensure an unpolished post doesn’t go live by accident, compose your Tweets in a Google Doc or Word document and review them ahead of time to make sure everything is grammatically correct and as well-written as can be. Use spell check, but also be sure to verify the correct spelling of things like hashtags and names that the spell checker might not be able to handle. Read everything out loud or, better yet, have another person review it to make sure it makes sense.

Do you want to tell Oprah it’s “buried” and not “burried” or should I?

Fact check your content

There’s nothing worse than sending a Tweet promoting a 50% off coupon when the offer is actually 5% off. Review the post carefully to make sure any factual information such as offers, dates, times, and addresses are all accurate.

Double check the link

When you’re scheduling multiple Tweets at a time with 20 browser windows open, it can be easy to put the wrong link in the wrong post. Make sure the link you’re using goes to the correct landing page and includes the right tracking code, if applicable.

Verify the graphic

Make sure you’re attaching the right image to the right post. In addition, if you’re posting on multiple platforms, make sure you’re using the version of the graphic that’s optimized for Twitter.

Proof it again during scheduling

Sure, you checked everything twice when you were creating the content. But when you’re scheduling your posts, take an extra second to proof them again out loud. Since you’re likely adding posts into your scheduling platform days after you first wrote the content, the cold light of day may reveal mistakes or opportunities to rewrite the content to make it even stronger.

Check your published Tweet

It never hurts to look at Twitter once a Tweet has posted to make sure everything looks okay. If you catch something, you can always delete the post, fix it, and quickly repost it. We won’t tell.

Additional reading:

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