A few years ago, I wanted to write a blog post that was perfectly promotable on Twitter. Now, when most people think about promoting a post on social media, it’s all about coming up with a really clever title that grabs attention. Nothing wrong wtih that, but it’s not quite the direction I was going.
My goal was to write an entire post that could be shared on twitter. Every word. This was the result.
Did I accomplish what I set out for? Arguably, I did. Every paragraph makes a point and is less than 140 characters; perfect for a tweet. I didn’t always leave room for a short URL linking back to the post, but that was beside the point. Besides, I just wanted to see if it could be done (kind of like a scientist, or a Hollywood exec). I wanted to show that we have to embrace a new way of thinking, especially for social media.
I made the point in the that post but I’ll make it again here: Not every sentence you write needs to be tweetable. However… we need to write tweetable content. The soundbite has become the twitterbite.
It might be worth the effort, while reviewing blog posts prior to publication, to see if you can change any sentence structures to be more tweetable.
For example, two paragraphs above originally read “I made the point in the linked post that not every sentence you write needs to be tweetable. But we do need to write tweetable content. The soundbite has become the twitterbite.” A slight modification made everyting after the colon tweetable in multiple forms:
Tweet: Not every sentence you write needs to be tweetable. However… We need to write tweetable content. The soundbite has become the twitterbite.
Tweet: [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=”@StoneyD”]Not every sentence you write needs to be tweetable. However… We need to write tweetable content.[/inlinetweet]
Tweet: [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=”@StoneyD”]We need to write tweetable content. The soundbite has become the twitterbite.[/inlinetweet]
Most of my changes were merely cosmetic for copy/paste… making sure sentences start with a capital letter and all that. It probably wasn’t necessary, but I’m a perfectionist about such things.
When you push out blog post titles, you’re being promotional. When you push out portions of content from your blog post, you’re being helpful. It’s up to you if you want to link each tweet back to the original post. Again, it’s a promotion vs. help issue. I suggestion finding a good balance.
Of course, this type of promotion works with more than just blog posts. Presentations, ebooks and other content can also just as easily be broken down into tweets. Some of those may link back to the source and some will just be for educational purposes only. Either way you’re providing value to your readers, just in different forms.