At Social Media Marketing 2013 we were treated to not one but two hilarious and thought-provoking presentations from actor and comedian David Schneider on the topic of Twitter.  

He's very big on the platform himself, through perfecting the art of combining humour and topicality to create very retweetable content.

In particular I've noticed how he'll take two unrelated topics in the news and put them together to create some nugget of comedy genius that actually does make you laugh out loud.  

He's now formed a company offering Twitter comedy to brands, That Lot, with a team made up of people from Twitter who are naturally very funny, such as the estimable @scriblit.

Taking a tip from the likes of Betfair Poker, Waterstones Oxford Street and Arena Flowers, it's for brands who are willing to take a risk with their Twitter output and offer a stream of humorous and esoteric content, rather than playing it safe.

I really enjoyed seeing him talk about the subject of writing for social media, one of my favourite topics. In fact, conference organisers Our Social Times asked me to come and talk about this at Social Media Marketing 2010. The slides are knocking around somewhere.

Tending your Twitter garden

One of the things he highlighted was the importance of tending your 'Twitter garden'. This is what people see when they first visit your page to check you out.

You should be asking yourself:

• How does my biog read? Too long? Can it be more snappy and still impart the same information?

• How do my tweets look? David always offers a thoughtful reply rather than a simple yes or no, despite the masses of tweets he must receive every day.

Social media and the effect on language 

My other favourite moment was when he was asked about whether social media is damaging to language. No, he responded emphatically, "We're living in a golden age of verbal creativity."  

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Our other blog post from the conference: Content marketing is the future of social media (for now) 

See all the slides from the conference on the Our Social Times Storify.