One Article Many Ways

You’ve just written a great article, blog post, newsletter feature, or report and now you have to condense all those ideas into 140 characters.  How do you effectively do this to draw readers and get their attention in the noisy online world we live in?

Here are three tips to help you start writing engaging status updates:

1. State your conclusion

Don’t be afraid to lead off with the most important thing you want the reader to take away. The more tangible and clear you are with what your readers are going to learn, the faster they are able to connect to the content. Including numbers or statistics in headlines, Facebook updates, or tweets have statistically higher click through rates. Readers know exactly what they are going to get out of spending their time reading your article.

2.  Put your readers first

Make sure the language is jargon free and audience-centric. Will someone who has never heard of your organization or doesn’t know anything about your work understand what you’re saying? Focus more on what’s helpful for your different audiences and what they’re looking for and less on the fact that you wrote it.

3. Use images on Facebook, hashtags on Twitter

On networks like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instragram photos always win out. Using good imagery on your blog or newsletter not only make it more visually appealing, but also help when sharing. Post the same photo from your article on Facebook and include a link back to the article to drive traffic to your content.  On Twitter and Instagram, use a hashtag to connect your article to a conversation already taking place. Hashtags can help you connect to others in your space talking about similar topics, give context to the greater article, or connect it to other content or campaigns your organization is already running.

Just remember that your followers on Twitter are expecting something different from the people that like you on Facebook. Facebook users don’t want to see hashtags and your Twitter followers don’t want you to waste space with full URL’s. Instead of auto-feeding those updates across all platforms, write new messages for each one. You’ll see a difference.