NET225S Writing for Electronic Media - Brevity

NET225 S Writing for Electronic Media - Brevity

NET225S Writing for Electronic Media

 

Brevity

 

 

One of the interesting consequences of the rise of social media - Facebook and Twitter, in particular - is the prevalence of the “micro-blog,” or a web posting that is extremely abbreviated.

 

Twitter’s post limit is 140 characters. Not words - characters! Including spaces and punctuation. Here’s what you can say in 140 characters:

 

How do you explain Twitter to someone who doesn't follow Twitter? Tweets are trail markers, saying "go this way to find interesting stuff."

 

Actually, that’s 139. The input field on Twitter’s web page counts them down for you.

 

What happens if you want to say more? One option is to use a blog+autopost option, such as Posterous. Here’s a longer post, as it appears on Twitter:

 

Springsteen lost and found: The Promise http://post.ly/198QF

 

That is actually just the title and a shortened URL link to the full blog post at http://edisonnet.posterous.com/springsteen-lost-and-found-the-promise. The URL itself is 69 characters - fully half of the allowed character count for a tweet (what an entry on Twitter is called). Posterous, in addition to posting the entry to blogs, Facebook, etc., will create a shortened URL to save character counts.

 

There are a number of URL shortening services, Bit.ly being perhaps the most popular. These work by building a simple table, using a uniquely generated string of letters and numbers and associating that string with a full URL. When someone clicks on (or enters) the shortened Bit.ly address, the site forwards the page request to the actual URL.

 

Another place characters count is in Facebook ads. Facebook ads are fairly inobtrusive, as web-based ads go. They appear on pages as relevant content, based on either the content of the posts or on information in the user’s profile settings. Here are two ads that appeared on one of my pages recently:

 

 

The disc golf ad appears because I am a member of the Edison Disc Golf fan page. The other is because I graduated from high school in 1977. Your ads will differ based on your preferences and settings. If you notice, just above the Disc Golf Superstore heading, there’s a link to “Create an Ad.” If you want to see something cool and magical happen, paste in a URL of your website (your blog URL is OK) and click the “Suggest an Ad” button. Facebook reads the content of the site and puts in a title, some body text and even a graphic!

 

Note that you have 25 characters for a headline, and 135 for the body text. Edit your title and body text to get a message to a prospective audience. Facebook will show you a preview of what it looks like:

 

 

The next step is to target your ads (you can still do all this without committing to a purchase). Try different keywords and demographics to see how that affects your potential audience.

 

 

If you are interested in how Facebook ad pricing works, click Continue. Otherwise, post a screen capture of your ads (try a few) and some information about your demographic selections to your blog. Specifically address how your ad copy targets the people you identified in your demographic selections.

 

Then try to recreate the ad in a Twitter entry, including a shortened URL to point people to your web address.

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