How Microblogging Will Rock Web Publishing World
Who doesn’t have a Twitter account these days? If are one of the few who doesn’t, you at least know what it is (and you should sign up today). Twitter, once described by a wise man as 140 characters of id and now it’s changing the game.
Twitter Changes Everything
Twitter is changing the perceptions of what everyday web users perceive to be pertinent content. Soon, the days of the long descriptive sentence effectiveness will be gone entirely. Marketeers and copywriters alike, tune your communication methods because within a year, if it’s not under 140 – it won’t be effective. Web readers will become habituated to shorter hooks as Twitter becomes their preferred method for receiving content.
Five Principles of Rockstar Content
Please note – none of these principles are new, but they are becoming ever more important. If anything, take away these five simple principles and you will be on your way to getting prepared.
- Tweetable Titles - Keeping titles short will be a sure fire way to get them sent all over social media outlets. Think 40-60 characters.
- Cut Fluff - One piece of advice I learned from Stephen King’s On Writing was adjectives and adverbs are not your friend. Cut them out at all costs. Your visitors will respect you for serving them more direct content and be more likely to link to you. Web users can smell fluff a mile away when there’s no body language to hide behind and they don’t like it.
- Think Architecturally – The days of lots of content taking up the entire screen is over. The newspaper model worked for print, but users don’t want to stare at lots of words on a screen. Use header tags to create an outline of your content for your users. Users will thank you for not having a big blog of content for them to digest.
- Think Graphically – If an image can communicate a thousand words, use it. Using images to communicate trends, summaries, and other high level information is great for the linkability of your content as well as summarizing it for your users.
- No More Content Pagination - Not only is this bad from an SEO standpoint, it’s annoying to users. If you have that much content, do multiple posts, stories, vlogs, or any other way to communicate information faster. – don’t put the burden on the user to get your content. Serve it to them in a simple easy to digest manner.
Summary
Principles of Rockstar Design
Don’t take this as the Gospel, if your current method works, use it. If you have a lot of detailed content – be sure to explain it. Just consider the five principles above as time goes on and your readership will thank you.
