How to Tweet Newsy Links for Attention
Aug 24, 2017 · 2 min read
Some tips for reporters starting out

If you’re a reporter at the beginning of your career, one way to get attention online is to tweet links to news stories.
But you also have to do it well.
Here are some tips for how to tweet out newsy links.
- Start with trusted national news outlets. It’s good to have a base of sources like the New York Times, the Washington Post ,the Wall Street Journal, CNN, NPR, TIME, Reuters and the Associated Press.
- Add your beat. If you don’t have a beat, pick a subject area you’re intersted in. Tweet links from news outlets on that beat. For tech, that would be The Verge, Wired, TechCrunch and Gizmodo.
- Add some local news sources. Whether it’s your hometown, a place you used to live or the area you live now, add some local news sources. When a big story breaks somewhere, tweet links to local coverage.
- Keep your tweets short and sweet. Give the news and get out. Avoid commentary, adjectives, hashtags and other detritus. Don’t get bogged down in names and details.
- Use low-key formatting. Use downstyle. Don’t put periods or colons at the end of the tweet. Avoid swear words and emojis. Limit the use of weird abbreviations and symbols. Use bitly or other link shorteners.
- Find an interesting fact. Don’t just recapitulate the headline. Find an interesting detail from farther down in the story and highlight that. The preview link will show the headline anyway.
- Quote someone from the article. Look for a short but colorful quote that grabs your attention but also leaves part of the story unsaid. This is a great way to create a curiosity gap.
- Or quote the article itself. One safe option is to find the nut graf of the article or a particularly pithy sentence and put it in quotation marks.
- Include reporter handles. Adding the Twitter handle of the reporter who wrote the story is a good way to get noticed and followed back, especially if you’re on the same beat.
- Never use the words “breaking news.” You’re almost never first on Twitter, people soon see the news elsewhere anyway and your tweet soon looks outdated.
- Delete and correct tweets when you get it wrong. If you get something wrong—especially if it starts getting retweeted—write a correction in reply to your own tweet and then delete the original one.
“I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.”
— Tom Stoppard
