Kanye West Shows Us All How Not to Tweet

(Let me preface this article by saying Sharp Dressed Brand LOVES Kanye’s music. I own every album he’s released on a major label, and other than 808′s and Heartbreak, I celebrate his entire collection.)

Kanye West, rapper, mogul, and all-around gentleman (just ask Taylor Swift), finally joined Twitter two weeks ago, and the tech and music communities were buzzing. Sure, the fact that a major celebrity, musician, politician, athlete, or other famous person has decided to micro-tweet their world is nothing really newsworthy, well, unless your Kanye West and have publicly blasted the platform for months. Whether it was dissing Twitter in an improv freestyle at the Facebook headquarters, a verbal lambasting he gave the company after they refused to shut down some Kanye parody accounts, or just another one of his Kanye-branded”egotistical diatribes” that swarmed the webosphere, Kanye had all but made up his mind on the value of having a Twitter account.  But, unlike most of his musical and artistic decisions, he was obviously mistaken.

Over the past weeks, Kanye has been tweeting relentlessly. His tweets have sent the web’s comedic arm hard at work, pairing his tweets with cartoons from the New Yorker and making a hilarious new hashtag phenomena #PredictingKanyeTweets. He’s obviously in a profession where engaging with fans on Twitter makes total sense. Kanye’s music, personality and style forms his brand, and thus being able to communicate directly with his community through Twitter can be a powerful tool for building his brand equity. But just because you’re a musical genius in the studio doesn’t mean you’ll be a savvy digital marketer on the web, and nothing seems to prove this more than Kanye’s first few weeks of tweets.

If you’re one of the 400,000 plus followers of @KanyeWest, you’ve probably noticed a few things about Kanye’s Twitter:

1)  Lack of Relevance.

Kanye’s tweets about everything, whether its his rolex, his artistic prowess, the traffic outside, the shoes he’s wearing, the way his hangover feels, etc. etc. etc.  Although there are probably some “Kanye-ites” who cherish the access to a deluge of Kanye’s daily activities and thoughts, the lack of a relevance filter on Kane’s tweets force most of us to simply skip over a majority of his tweets.

2)  Overindulgence.

One of the first rules of  using Twitter effectively is the necessity for restraint, especially when it comes to the frequency and consistency of your tweeting. Not only does Kanye tweet about anything and everything, perpetuating the opinion that micro-blogging is simply an extension of our personal narcissism, he also tweets incredibly sporadically. 18 hours will pass without a tweet, and then all of a sudden, your feed will be full of ten to fifteen tweet spurts from West. You can pretty much peg the times when Kanye is “busy” and when he’s just hanging out. Either way, this undisciplined approach to tweeting makes his account very tough to follow.

3)  Incoherence.

This comes without saying, but Kanye’s tweets are often difficult to understand, not from a grammatical perspective but from a “what in the world” type of perspective. Many of Kanye’s tweets force the reader to think, “Well, if I was hanging with Kanye right then and there, then I could potentially see what he’s talking about if X and Y and Z.” Well, with a crowd of over 400,000 followers and growing, tweeting in this fashion more quickly alienates than engages. I’m not saying Kanye should try to be someone else on Twitter. Sharp Dressed Brand’s perspective is simply that you must understand the size and reach of your digital microphone, and just because crowds are listening, it doesn’t mean they actually “hear” you.

I’m hoping these current Twitter deficiences are simply the normal mistakes of a new tweeter, but I have a feeling that, even if he understood the current issues with his tweeting style, his feed might be a lost cause…

And finally, here’s my collection of some of my favorite “Kanye-isms” over the past weeks.

“Fur pillows are hard to actually sleep on”

“I love everybody… only thing I don’t like is taxes.. me and taxes gone fight”

“now playing POWER literally!!!”

“Oh my God… I have no idea what these Swedish tweets mean… what have I done !!!!!! Oh nooooooooooooooo”

“Hungover a bit… trying on suits”

“Office clothes are the shit”

Think I’ve got it wrong?  Do you love Kanye’s Twitter?  Let me know!