Social media writing: 4 valuable tips

After throwing ourselves into some of the how-to’s of catchy headlines, let’s now take a look at what usually follows: your content. To thank you for visiting BITS, I’d like to give you four tips on writing for social media. And to top it off, these tips contain little ‘sub-tips’ themselves.

Indeed, it's total madness.

Write from your reader’s perspective

During a quest for information I found this slightly old-fashioned page that kicks off brilliantly with the following header and first words:

How users read on the web


They don’t.

Good point. After all, this might be the era of the short attention span. That’s why people want content to be highly scannable. Keep that in mind when writing. Highlight words or parts of sentences that could function as keywords for the text. Provide your reader with informative sub-headings. And, certainly not the least important advice, be brief.

Selling something? Don’t talk like you’re selling something

Here they call it ‘marketese’, here they name it ‘salesy’: a promotional writing style. Most of the time, readers don’t appreciate it. The advice is to just not write like that. Instead, make your article fun to read by providing honest, useful content. For free!

Use Twitter

Why? Simple. Using Twitter is a matter of what I like to call defying brevity. And defying brevity is a way to improve your writing. You only get 140 characters per tweet, which basically means you have to avoid redundance.

Also, the limited space challenges your lexicon. There’s only so many characters, so if you can formulate what you want to say in a shorter way, that’s the way to go. Repeatedly dealing with this will make you a better writer (and editor).

Discover your tactics as you go

As they emphasize here, coming up with ‘hot content’ for social media marketing requires a long term commitment. Unless you’re blessed with some serious beginners luck, you’ll have to keep trying until you find techniques that suit both you and your readers. Guess they don’t always say 'practice makes perfect' for nothing.

Off you go now, good luck! And tell a friend to check out BITS. You will be rewarded.

Sources / Further reading

Copyblogger | How Twitter makes you a better writer
Copyblogger | Writing for the social media everyman
Digital Labz | 10 foolproof steps to writing hot social media content
Useit.com | How users read on the web

You'll have to do better than this

“This my new blog <link>”
“Please come see <link> because I need visitors”
“New post on <link>, check it out”

I’d like to say this right away. You’ll have to do better than this.

For the record: I don’t mean to offend anyone, I don’t want to seem pedantic or anything, I just think you should step your game up a little. Up your creativity. Among students I often encounter statements like “It’s something I have to do for this course I follow so let’s just muddle along and hope I don’t screw it up.”

If this approach suits you, that’s fine - I just think it’s too bad you don’t utilize the knowledge you've gained in order to make people want to visit your page deliberately.

Now, all this preaching will probably not make you praise me to the skies, and on top of that, I’m only putting pressure on myself now. Which of course will make you visit my blog regularly in order to be the first to know when I make a mistake. It’s all good, bring on the traffic :)

Oops. Just gave that away.

Anyhow, you’ll have to do better than people who come up with titles like the examples mentioned previously. Studying Text & Communication I've developed a profound interest in persuasion and how to apply this to copywriting. Let's go through a few guidelines, provided by ProCopyTips, on how to attract attention with your headlines.

Offer a benefit to your readers
As they say on the website, “show the reader that you have something very important inside that is going to be of HUGE value to him/her”. We all like that, we all want that, so we all scrutinize text looking for that.

Address your readers personally
Make it feel like a conversation. The word ‘you’ is surprisingly effective for that matter.

Leave a question in their minds
A headline has to give the readers an indication of what they can expect, but also has to make them curious. If there's one piece of candy, they'll come looking for more.

Next to, obviously, being clear and being informative, these are some rules of thumb to remember. I look forward to seeing you all bring in loads of visitors with headlines that would even convince the savviest of copywriters to click them. Good luck!

For further reading, check out ProCopyTips on writing snappy headlines that make sales.