Newcomers to Twitter will quickly find that the philosophy of “Keep It Short and Simple“, also known as K.I.S.S., is the key to successful tweets. One good reason: shorter tweets enable other users to retweet your post and share it with their online followers.

However, retweeting takes up some of the 140 characters Twitter allots for users. This means if the post uses all of the available space, it’s nearly impossible for you to share it.

For companies and agencies using Twitter for marketing purposes, this could translate to less traffic and people wanting to follow your account.

Here’s a bad example:

@SamBrace tweets: I think that you should reserve a seat for yourself at the social media workshop to learn all about Twitter. More info: http://bit.ly/TwqVb

This tweet leaves only one character for you, leaving you no way to share the workshop news with your Twitter network.

Here’s a good example:

@SamBrace tweets:  Reserve a seat at the social media workshop to learn all about Twitter. http://bit.ly/TwqVb.

Now you can retweet this:

RT @SamBrace Reserve a seat at the social media workshop to learn all about Twitter.  http://bit.ly/TwqVb.

Notice the example still has 35 characters to spare, even with the retweet tags.

If you want, tweet about this blog post to test this out. I can’t promise people will RT what you say, but it’s worth a shot and is good practice for those still learning.