©iStock.com/saw
So, you’ve decided to create a blog post. Or perhaps, you want to publish an article on an Internet magazine.
Whatever it is, you will probably want to promote your piece through social media.
If what you are writing is going end up online, pay attention. There are certain steps you need to follow if you want to attract readers through social media.
9 Characteristics of Social Media Friendly Writing
Here are nine characteristics of writing for social media that leads to success:
- Know who you are writing for. Is your material for bloggers? Is it for consumers? Or, are you writing for a more specialized audience?
- Understand your audience. Use terms or phrases that your intended readers would likely use. If you can do it without destroying the flow of your piece, develop keywords from those terms and phrases.
- Research. Perform the research necessary to ensure that your writing contains unique and useful information. When appropriate, link to additional resources in your writing and/or embed videos and audio files.
- Create a web-friendly headline. Your headline should be short enough that users on social media sites (like Twitter) can easily share the link. Your headline needs to grab your reader’s attention so that they will click through to read your piece.
- Write a strong first paragraph. The first paragraph should captivate your audience and draw them into the rest of your piece. Without a strong first paragraph, your piece may not be read at all.
- Write the rest of your material. Make sure readers can scan your post or article quickly by using bullets and other web-friendly formatting.
- Select a captivating image. Your image should be related to your piece, but also graphically interesting. Be sure to use royalty-free or Creative Commons images. (Creative Commons photos must include attribution.)
- Ask for a response. End your article or post by asking the reader to respond. The desired response can be a comment, or you might want the reader to click on a link to gather more information.
- Include your information. Your piece should contain your complete contact information and a link to your company website so that readers can contact you or view more of your work.
Promote Your Work
Now you are ready to promote what you’ve written on social media.
Summarize your information in a few compelling sentences so that social media users can easily share your information. Encourage involvement by asking a question or inviting the social media audience to comment. Don’t forget to include a link back to your post or article.
Finally, track and measure your social media results using analytics tools to learn where you traffic has come from.
What additional tips about writing for social media would you include?
15 responses so far ↓
1 Angie Papple Johnston // Mar 10, 2011 at
Great advice here. When I’m reading blog posts, I often scan the first paragraph to see if it’s going to contain anything I’m interested in reading (and I think I do it subconsciously) – so you’re absolutely right… if you can hook ’em with that first paragraph, they’ll read the rest. And they’ll probably look through the rest of your stuff when their first impression was that you’ve got value to offer!
One thing I’d add is that you need to make it easy for people to respond – for some reason, I am compelled to read each and every response on a blog post before I can click away (which keeps me on the site longer, and may raise other questions I can find the answers to on the same blog). This blog is a great example… all I had to do was scroll down. I never bother to leave comments on blogs where I’ve got to go to another screen and enter a captcha and all that – it’s usually too much hassle.
Again, great post. I’m going to go tweet it now. 🙂
2 Hazel Jarrett // Mar 11, 2011 at
Hi Laura,
a nice post with some great tips thank you.
I’ve been writing posts for a little while and I find that the interesting but lighthearted posts seem to work best for me.
3 Laura Spencer // Mar 11, 2011 at
Thanks Hazel,
I’m sure everyone has different material that they prefer to write about and a preferred writing style. It sounds like you’ve found yours. 🙂
4 andy // Jul 14, 2011 at
Good stuff Laura.
I’m currently writing lots of articles for various websites and often have writer’s block.
I often find that I don’t develop an individual style doing this as different sites may require a different approach.
However I am working on a couple of blogs and this is where my natural style can flourish, which is where I hope to be able to take advantage of the social media.
Thanks for the tips, sometimes its hard to remember to do all these things when you write in different ways for different purposes.
5 Taylor // Oct 3, 2011 at
I think the key for me with social media is a real focus by the writer to engage the reader. This is going to help create the viral aspects of social media that we all want and I know I have to think a bit differently when I’m writing to accomplish this wanted engagement.
6 Liam // Oct 4, 2011 at
One thing you don’t metion here Laura is the actual length of the article. Do you think there is a “sweet spot” in terms of an articles length. Too short and maybe the reader is not getting all the information they need, or conversely too long and they may become bored and not make it to the end of the article.
Having written several articles for online sites such as Ezine Articles, I find I get the best response when my article is between 500-700 words long. At this length I find my click thru’ rate is at its highest. It gives us just enough time to get over the important facts without taking too long about it.
However, be careful not to aim for a specific amount of words in an article. If you do, an article can start of strong and then become weaker as you near your word count target. Write the article naturally and then edit it afterwards. Doing it that way will make for a much better balanced article that your readers will enjoy and hopefully click on your link to learn more!!
7 Laura Spencer // Oct 4, 2011 at
Hi Taylor,
Engagement is definitely important.
Liam–That’s a good question. Your findings are interesting, and that length of article sounds adequate for most purposes. I do agree with your last point–the content of an article or post is more important than its word count.
8 Caleb C. Rivera // Oct 6, 2011 at
Thank you for posting this Laura. Great tips you have here on how social media can be a helpful avenue to promote your website or blog post. I agree that one should do proper research so that one’s writing is indeed useful and entertaining. And one more thing I learned from a fellow writer is to put in additional resources such as videos and audio files.
9 Laura Spencer // Oct 11, 2011 at
Thanks Caleb! I’m glad you enjoyed the post. Video and audio can also be helpful.
10 Caleb C. Rivera // Oct 13, 2011 at
I agree with you on this Laura. The meat and the content fo the article is far more important than how long it is. And taking the perspective that only a few people would spend that much of a time reading a super long article, I suggest to making it brief and direct as much as possible.
11 Laura Spencer // Oct 18, 2011 at
Hi Caleb!
I think it depends on how interested the reader is. With a long article you may get fewer readers, but they might be more interested (which could mean more conversions if you are selling something).
Personally, I prefer blog posts and articles to audio and video since I can read rather quickly. With audio and video I am forced to absorb the material at a much slower pace. So, unless I really want to know what an audio or video posts says, I usually skip them. But, that could just be me. 🙂
12 Amanda // Dec 29, 2011 at
Another thing I notice is the popularization of “simple blog posts” – meaning, blog post that is easily digestible. That’s why I think formats like “7 tips to ______” and “Top five ways to __________” are popular because people have Internet “ADHD” (me included, lol)
13 Laina Brock // Jan 4, 2012 at
Hi there Laura thanks for the info. I often find it difficult to write for my sites as a lot of them are in the same niches and therefore I am concerned that I will inadvertently be writing “duplicate content” which we all know is not great! Never use one of the “spinning” tools you can get as then the writing becomes gobbledeegook!
My top tips for writing for the reader is to keep the posts factual and light hearted, I am a bit of a joker and this comes through in my writing style which I think can help the reader relate to you.
14 Laura Spencer // Jan 4, 2012 at
Hi Amanda and Laina!
Thanks for adding your own tips. 🙂 I agree that lists can be helpful, and yes, it’s important to know what you’re talking about.
15 Has Your Content Strategy Lost Its Focus? Here’s How to Tell // Jan 16, 2015 at
[…] Your Posts Are Hard to Read. You may have great and useful things to share, but your blog reader is in a hurry. You need to make sure that they can scan your article quickly to see whether it is worth reading. If they can’t scan, they’ll move on. Learn more, How to Write for Social Media. […]