A Kinder, Gentler Twitter

Do you use Twitter? Do you actively tweet? Or do you lurk? When you tweet, what do you tweet?

Do you tweet only to promote yourself, your business, or your blog? Do you tweet every little detail of your day? Do you tweet every random thought that comes to your mind? Do you tweet your workouts via DailyMile or Nike+ or some other fitness website or app? Do you auto-tweet when you’ve liked something, pinned something, poked someone, dug something, or klouted something?

I’m a pretty eclectic tweeter, I think. My tweets include complaints about companies and people, quotes, jokes, business articles, fitness articles, some (not all!) foursquare check-ins, and random thoughts. I’ve not made a concerted effort to have a cohesive Twitter voice just like I don’t obsess about how many followers I have or how many tweets I’ve made.

These past few weeks, it felt like a lot of my tweets were angry tweets. I didn’t like that feeling because I love this time of year and it felt like my tweets weren’t honoring my true feelings for this season. It felt like I was always complaining about a work project or something else that was upsetting or annoying me.

I have gone back through my December tweets thus far and discovered that I wasn’t as whiny or complaining as I thought I was. Thank goodness.

Have you ever thought about what your tweets say about you? About how your tweets sound to your followers? About how your tweets sound to someone who sees your tweet via one of your followers or if it’s retweeted?

Twitter has made it easy – and relatively anonymous – to complain about a company, product, or person. It’s so easy to type out 140 characters and hit “send” or “tweet” that often we put our thoughts out there without thinking it through completely. Without stopping to think about the consequences of that tweet – for yourself or the person or company you’ve tweeted about. Without pausing for a moment to consider your own mental and emotional state.

Of course, all this applies to Facebook status updates, too.

So the next time you’re about to tweet or update your Facebook status, pause for a moment before hitting “send” or tweet,” read your tweet or status update, and think about what it says about you. I certainly will try to be more conscious of my tweets in the future.

And the thought processor churns on . . .