Jeff Bullas

That’s an excellent point! Twitter threads are a cracker way to share more in-depth thoughts and keep people hooked beyond the usual character limits. But getting them right is a fine art.

A good Twitter thread is essentially a story told in snippets, and how you use various content formats can make it truly sing.

Text (The Core Narrative): Each tweet in your thread needs to be concise but contribute to the overall message. Think of each tweet as a mini-chapter.

Hook ’em in: The very first tweet is crucial. It needs a compelling headline or a question that immediately grabs attention and signals there’s more to come. Something that sparks curiosity or promises significant value. You might even use an emoji like 🧵 to indicate it’s a thread.

Break it down: Don’t dump too much information into one tweet. Break complex ideas into digestible chunks, perhaps one main point per tweet. Use clear, direct language and avoid jargon where possible.

Flow and pace: Ensure a logical progression from one tweet to the next. Each tweet should lead the reader to want to see what’s next. You can end tweets with a cliffhanger or a transition phrase to maintain momentum.

Recap (Optional but effective): For longer threads, a final tweet that summarises the key takeaways or lessons learned can be incredibly valuable for retention.

Images & Video (Visual Engagement): Don’t rely solely on text. Visuals break up the scroll and make your thread more engaging and memorable.

Illustrate points: Use images, infographics, screenshots, or short video clips to explain concepts, provide examples, or add humour.

Attention-grabbing visuals: The right visual can significantly increase the chances of someone stopping to read your thread. Make sure your visuals are high-quality and relevant.

GIFs for personality: A well-placed GIF can add personality and lighten the tone, especially in more informal threads.

Audio (Implied Value): While a thread is primarily visual and text-based, the idea of audio can still play a role. If your thread is summarising a longer piece of content, like a podcast or a Spaces discussion you’ve had, you can link to that audio at the end. It’s about providing value in various forms.

The goal is to keep people reading, and more importantly, to get them to engage and share.

Clear Value Proposition: Right from the first tweet, the reader should know what they’ll gain by reading your thread. Is it a lesson? A story? A list of tips? Be upfront about the value.

Call to Action (CTA): What do you want people to do after they finish reading? Do you want them to retweet, comment, follow you, or click a link to your website or newsletter? Always include a clear CTA at the end of your thread. Make it easy for them to take the next step.

Interactive Elements: Encourage discussion within the thread. Ask questions throughout the thread to prompt replies. You can also use polls if they fit the narrative. Responding to comments and questions quickly keeps the conversation alive.

Avoid Overwhelm: While threads let you bypass character limits, don’t make them excessively long. Too many tweets in a thread can deter readers. Aim for quality over quantity.

No “Clickbait” Without Substance: A strong hook is good, but don’t promise something you don’t deliver. If your first tweet is purely clickbait and the thread doesn’t provide the promised value, you’ll lose credibility and trust. Ensure the content lives up to the initial intrigue.

Cheers,

Jeff

That’s a smart question. The Lists feature on X (formerly Twitter) is one of the most powerful yet consistently underutilised tools for managing information and building relationships on the platform.

Instead of letting the main algorithm dictate everything you see, Lists allow you to create your own curated, noise-free timelines for very specific purposes. Here are some of the most effective ways to use them strategically:

Competitor and Industry Monitoring: Create a private list of your key competitors, major industry publications, and top news sources. This gives you a dedicated, real-time feed to monitor market trends and competitor activity without having to publicly follow every account or search for them individually.

Customer and Client Listening: Another powerful use for a private list is to add your key customers or clients. This allows you to easily keep up with what they are talking about, understand their current challenges and successes, and find opportunities for genuine, non-salesy engagement.

Networking and Relationship Building: Identify the top 20-30 people in your industry that you want to build a professional relationship with and add them to a private list. This creates a focused feed where you can consistently and thoughtfully engage with their content, which makes you much more visible to them over time.

Curating Public Resources: Create a public list to position yourself as an expert and provide value to your audience. For example, you could create a list titled “Top Voices in AI” or “Must-Follow Marketing Experts.” This becomes a valuable resource that your followers can subscribe to. As a bonus, when you add influential people to a public list, they are notified, which can be a great, low-pressure way to get on their radar.

Event and Conference Tracking: If you are attending an industry event, either virtually or in person, create a list of the speakers, sponsors, and other key attendees. This makes it incredibly easy to follow the real-time conversation surrounding the event in one clean feed.

The bottom line is that Twitter Lists are a strategic tool for cutting through the chaos of the main feed. Use private lists for your internal research and focused networking efforts, and use public lists to provide value to your community and build your authority in your niche.

Cheers,

Jeff

Deciding whether to pay for a social media subscription like X Premium is really a question of whether you are a casual consumer of content or a serious creator on the platform. For most casual users, it is a ‘nice-to-have’. For creators, it is fast becoming the cost of doing business.

Here is a no-nonsense breakdown of what you are actually paying for as a creator in 2025:

The Blue Checkmark: Let’s get this out of the way first. Yes, you get the blue checkmark. It no longer signifies that you are a notable public figure in the traditional sense; it now primarily signals that you are a paying subscriber. For some, this may help with perceived credibility, but its main function is as an entry ticket to the other features.

Increased Reach (The Main Incentive): The biggest drawcard is the promise of prioritised ranking in conversations and search. X’s algorithm is designed to give a boost to replies from Premium subscribers, making your voice louder in busy threads. While the day-to-day impact can feel variable, it is a stated algorithmic advantage over non-paying accounts.

Access to Monetisation: This is a critical point for creators. A Premium subscription is a prerequisite to be eligible for Ad Revenue Sharing. This program allows you to earn a cut from the advertising revenue generated in the replies to your posts, provided you also meet the necessary follower and impression thresholds. Without the subscription, you cannot participate.

Enhanced Content Features: You get access to a suite of practical tools that are essential for creators. This includes the ability to post longer videos, write long-form Articles that go well beyond the standard character limit, and the much-requested ability to edit your posts for a short period after publishing.

Bottom line: X has clearly created a two-tier system. If you are serious about building an audience, establishing yourself as a thought leader, and monetising your content directly on the platform, the Premium subscription has become almost a necessity. The algorithmic boost in replies and access to revenue sharing are the features designed to make it a worthwhile investment for active creators. For a casual user, the free version is likely still sufficient.

Cheers,

Jeff

Your TikTok profile picture is a crucial part of your brand identity on the platform. It appears everywhere—on your profile page, next to the username on every video you post, and on every comment you leave—so it needs to be clear, recognisable, and professional.

Here are the key best practices for choosing a good one:

Use a High-Resolution and Clear Image: This is the most important rule. Your image must be sharp and high-quality, even when viewed as a very small circle. A blurry, dark, or pixelated photo immediately looks unprofessional and untrustworthy.

Have a Clear, Uncluttered Background: Your profile picture is small and needs to stand out. The background should be simple and have a high contrast with the main subject. This helps your face or logo to “pop” and be easily seen. Avoid busy or distracting backgrounds.

For Personal Brands and Creators: A clear, high-quality headshot is almost always the most effective choice. The photo should show your face clearly, ideally looking towards the camera, and it should convey the personality of your brand, whether that is friendly and approachable or focused and professional. This builds a human connection with your audience.

For Business and Brand Accounts: A clean, simple version of your company logo is the standard and best practice. You must ensure the logo is designed to be legible and recognisable even when it is cropped into a small circle. Avoid logos that have very fine text or overly complex details that will become unreadable.

Maintain Consistent Branding: Your TikTok profile picture should be consistent with the profile pictures you use on your other social media platforms, like Instagram or YouTube. This is essential for building brand recognition and makes it much easier for your audience to find and identify your official account across different channels.

A great TikTok profile picture is a clear, high-contrast, and high-resolution image that instantly communicates who you are. For creators, this is typically a great headshot; for businesses, it is a clean logo. Consistency across all platforms is key.

Cheers,

Jeff

TikTok’s Text-to-Speech (TTS) feature has evolved from a simple accessibility tool into a powerful creative device for storytelling. Using it in clever ways can add a unique layer of humour, personality, and narrative depth to your videos.

Here are some effective and creative ways to use it for storytelling:

Give Inanimate Objects a Voice: A very popular and creative use of TTS is to narrate a video from the perspective of an object. This could be your pet’s inner thoughts, your morning coffee complaining about being empty, or a houseplant’s view of the world. This technique allows you to create a simple, funny, and original character.

Create Dialogue Between Characters: You can use the different TTS voices available to create a full conversation or a skit between multiple characters. This is an effective way to produce a scene with dialogue without needing to be a voice actor yourself or coordinating with other people.

Act as the “Inner Monologue” or Narrator: A highly effective technique is to use TTS to represent a character’s true, often sarcastic or brutally honest, inner thoughts while they act or speak differently on screen. It can also function as a deadpan, third-person narrator, providing comedic commentary on the events unfolding in the video.

Voice a “Robot” or “AI” Character: The distinct, slightly robotic nature of some of the TTS voices makes them perfect for creating content about technology or AI, or for creating futuristic and science-fiction themed skits.

Use it for Deadpan Comedic Delivery: The flat, emotionless tone of some TTS voices creates a perfect comedic contrast when paired with chaotic, absurd, or emotional visuals on screen. In these cases, the unemotional audio delivery becomes the punchline itself.

State Unspoken “Rules” or Social Commentary: You can use TTS to voice out the unwritten social rules of a particular situation (for example, “Things you just don’t do at the gym”) or to provide sharp, satirical commentary on a social trend.

The key to using Text-to-Speech creatively is to think of it as another character or a distinct narrative layer in your video. By using it for inner monologues, creating dialogue, or giving a voice to the unexpected, you can produce highly engaging and shareable content that goes far beyond a simple voiceover.

Cheers,

Jeff

This is a classic editing dilemma for anyone working with spoken-word audio. The best approach is not about total removal, but about finding the right balance between sounding professional and sounding authentically human.

The goal is to improve the clarity and flow of the conversation for the listener, not to achieve robotic perfection. Here are the best practices for handling filler words:

Remove Distracting Fillers: You should focus on editing out the filler words that are most noticeable and distracting. This includes long, pronounced “umms” and “ahhs,” especially those that occur during a long pause while the speaker is thinking. You should also remove false starts or repeated words that make a sentence confusing to follow.

Keep the Natural-Sounding Fillers: It is often best to leave in the very short, almost unnoticeable filler words that occur within the natural flow of a sentence. Removing every single one can make the speech sound jarring, choppy, and overly edited. A conversation without any imperfections can lose its human, relatable quality.

Prioritise Clarity Above All: The guiding question should always be: “Does this filler word hurt the clarity of the sentence?” If the answer is yes, remove it. If the answer is no, and removing it makes the speech sound unnatural, it is often better to leave it in.

Be Mindful of AI Tools: Many modern editing tools, such as Descript or Adobe Podcast, have excellent AI features that can automatically detect and remove filler words with a single click. While these tools are incredibly powerful and time-saving, it is still wise to review their automated edits. Sometimes they can be too aggressive and remove words that are needed to maintain a natural conversational cadence.

In summary, the goal is to make the speaker sound like a clear and confident version of themselves, not a robot. Remove the filler words that are distracting, but keep the subtle ones that preserve a natural, human flow.

Cheers,

Jeff

Infographics are a highly effective format for sharing data-rich or complex information on professional platforms like LinkedIn, as they make the content easy to understand, save, and share. To create one that performs well, you need to focus on both the design of the graphic and the strategy for sharing it.

Here are some best practices for creating and sharing an effective infographic:

Tell a Single, Clear Story: A great infographic is not just a collection of charts; it should tell a single, cohesive story with one main takeaway. Avoid the temptation to cram too many different topics or data points into one graphic, as this will dilute its impact.

Prioritise a Clean and Simple Design: Use a clean layout, a limited and on-brand colour palette, and easy-to-read fonts. White space is your friend; a cluttered and overly busy infographic is overwhelming and will cause people to scroll past.

Visualise Your Data Effectively: Choose the right type of chart or graph to represent your data accurately. The goal is to make complex information instantly understandable. Use simple icons and illustrations to support your points and make the design more engaging.

Optimise for the Platform: On LinkedIn, you have two main options for sharing. You can post the infographic as a single, long vertical image, but this requires users to click to expand it. A more engaging method is to slice your infographic into several square (1080×1080) or vertical (1080×1350) slides and upload it as a PDF document. This creates an interactive carousel that encourages swiping, which can increase the time people spend on your post.

Write a Compelling Post: The text in your LinkedIn post that accompanies the infographic is crucial. Use it to summarise the key insight from the graphic, provide some additional context, and ask a question to encourage a discussion in the comments.

Include a Clear Call to Action: Your final infographic slide and your post should tell people what to do next. This could be asking them to share their thoughts, directing them to a link in the comments for a full report, or encouraging them to follow your page for more insights.

A successful infographic combines a clear narrative with clean design and a smart distribution strategy. By formatting it as a PDF carousel for LinkedIn, you make the information more interactive and engaging for your audience.

Cheers,

Jeff

• This reply was modified 3 months ago by Neil Anthony.
• This reply was modified 3 months ago by Neil Anthony.

Embedding video within a LinkedIn Article is an excellent strategy to increase engagement, provide deeper context, and make your long-form content more dynamic and appealing.

First, it is important to understand the technical process. When you are writing an article using LinkedIn’s publishing tool, you will see options to add media. To add a video, you select the video icon and then you must paste a shareable link from a supported video hosting platform like YouTube or Vimeo. You cannot upload a video file directly into the article itself.

To use this feature effectively, there are several best practices to follow.

Choose a Highly Relevant Video: The video you embed must directly support the topic of your article. It should expand on a point you are making, provide a visual demonstration of a concept, or feature a clip from an interview that reinforces your text. An irrelevant video will feel like a distraction.

Be Strategic with Placement: Do not just place the video at the very beginning or end. A very effective technique is to position the video in the middle of the article, directly after you have introduced a concept that the video then helps to explain. This breaks up long blocks of text and can re-engage a reader partway through.

Always Provide Context: You should introduce the video with a sentence or two explaining what it is and why the reader should watch it. Similarly, after the video, you can add text that summarises a key takeaway or transitions to the next section. Never just drop a video in without an explanation.

Ensure the Video is Concise: Even within a long article, viewers’ attention spans for video can be short. A concise video that gets straight to the point is often more effective at holding attention than a very long one.

This strategy works well because it caters to different learning preferences, increases the total time people spend engaging with your article (which is a positive signal), and makes your key points more memorable.

Cheers,

Jeff