Picking up from yesterday – my typos. Oh, my typos.
If you’ve been around me while I’m tweeting, you know that I agonize for minutes over, “Is this the best way to say this?” “Do you see any typos?” and any other nagging questions that come up.
But, sometimes if you’re live tweeting, or tweeting quickly (which is I actually think how twitter was meant to be used anyway), I guess some things slip through the cracks, right?
When there is a typo in a “locked” tweet (a tweet that has gotten some kind of traction or special response), it is painful.
I want people to think I’m smart and know how to type. But alas, apparently sometimes that just cannot be the cast.
For one thing, that first tweet in yesterday’s post just might be my most popular tweet ever. I was live tweeting the Texas State Senate hearing on #SB1 (Senate Bill 1, severely over-regulating abortions in TX).
I tweeted this great quote that this woman gave. (“I’m moving to a state that doesn’t kill its own inmates. That’s how pro-life it is.”) (I put it in quotes and mentioned the woman (in case you were worried I’d try to pass the brilliance off as my own.))
But, then (if you didn’t notice), I mis-hashtagged #TexLege! I forgot the e at the end. By that point, my notifications were going crazy with over 10 (each!) of retweets and favorites. So, how do I fix it? Well, I can’t. I certainly can’t just delete it!
(I came to find out later that more people were using #TXlege (without the e in Tex) anyway. So, even if I got the right letters, I wasn’t on the biggest hashtag, which somehow gave me comfort.)
And if one typo in a 24-hour period wasn’t enough, I happened to tweet the Mayor as we were both on our way to work in the morning.
I thought what I said (in reply to him mentioning being on the bus) was, “You take the bus to work? (I do, and I’d love to know our mayor does too!)” But I actually said “out mayor,” not “our mayor.”
But he had replied to me when I saw that! And once your mayor replies, how are you going to just delete your tweet?
As I was lamenting to my friend about my twitter woes (and incompetence), he said, “Well, at least your tweet is showing the mayor one of his first priorities needs to be education since his residents can’t spell.” (Hardy, har, har.)
So, there you have it. My recent twitter mistakes.
After a long day/night of twitter mistakes and twitter craziness (and more things in the connect tab in one day than I usually get in probably a month), I ended up ending the evening with a nice little twitter conversation with Cory Booker’s campaign manager (Addisu Demissie (@ASDem)) after he tweeted out a question asking if he should sign up for a half marathon.
(Twitter conversations bring their own stress to twitter in my opinion. I love talking and connecting with new people on twitter (and am so happy when people tweet me (thank you!)), but having my timeline full of a bunch of @ mentions to people makes me nervous.
If new people look at the timeline, they’re going to think I just do those and don’t tweet out things. It’s a little draining for them to just look through a timeline chock full of @ mentions, trying to find someone’s actual tweets, you know? So, I try to generally limit those @ mentions. Of course, that can be hard sometimes! So, I don’t know if I’ll ever truly have a twitter strategy totally nailed down…
I guess for now, I’ll just keep doing twitter to the best of my ability, and getting out of it as much as I can.)
All in all, even in my mistakes, I love twitter. I really do gain a lot from it, and enjoy being part of so many conversations. (And I love laughing and learning, which I do more days than not on twitter.)
Do you have any twitter mistakes, strategies, or crazy twitter stories you’d like to share?