Interactive Insights Group

Want your tweets to be more compelling? Want to be a better writer on the social web?   Me too!

The advent of social media has opened up a wide range of opportunities for non-professional writers like me — and probably you too — to write online.  Most of us writing for websites or blogs or posting on Twitter likely aren’t trained journalists.  Even professional writers trained for print must learn to adapt their writing style to an online audience who experiences content differently than a print audience.

And social media itself has changed writing online – making it more informal and personal.  In fact, when you’re writing online these days, you’re writing not only for your audience but also for search engines and social media sites.  Add Twitter to the equation and the need to communicate with only 140 characters raises writing for the social web to a new art form.

In this post, we’ve pulled together a collection of articles with advice on writing for Twitter and the social web.  We’ve organized these articles into the following topics -  general online writing principles, writing strong headlines, writing for Twitter, and writing for search engines.

Let me know if you have any ideas or tips that have worked for you.

General Web and Social Media Writing Principles

• How Users Read On The Web
  From Jakob Nielsen: Advice on how people read on the web compared to how they read print publications.  One difference- people don’t read on the web, they scan and this requires a different writing style vs. print.
• How to Write for the Web
  From Knight Digital Media Center: Blogs, wikis and discussion boards dissolve the barrier between writer and reader, creating a more informal and interactive writing environment. Take advantage of this opportunity and distinguish yourself by writing in a clean, active, conversational style that will make your readers feel as comfortable reading your words as they feel when talking with a close friend. Here’s some advice on how to do this with social media.
• From Print to Web: Tips for the Transitioning Writer
  From Web Worker Daily: The web, and its readers, demands a different kind of writing, delivered in a different way. Here are some tips and resources to help get a handle on just what kind of change is required.
• Writing Style for Print vs. Web
  From Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox: Nielsen’s classic advice on writing for the web compared to writing for print.
• 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web: A List Apart
  From A List Apart:  Writing for dynamic web sites that are consulting changes (think blogs, wikis, community sites) requires a different approach than writing for static websites.  Here are 10 tips that can help with the reality of writing when things are always changing..

• 5 Rules for Better Web Writing
  From Mashable: Josh Catone provides 5 rules to be a better writer on the web from “knowing your objective” to “knowing your audience” to “keeping it short” to “making it scannable” to “embracing constraints.”

• Reading on the Web (Alertbox)
  From Jakob Nielsen: People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word. (Update: a newer study found that users read email newsletters even more abruptly than they read websites.)
• How Web Is Different from Print
  From Gerry McGovern: Of all the things that make the Web different from print, linking is the most important. Are we tool-making animals or are we animals made by tools? It’s an old question. How much did the quill shape our minds and worlds? We invented the printing press which then invented a new society, a new way of thinking.  Also read Gerry’s Traditional Writing Skills Don’t Work on Web – a discussion of why the type of writing many of us were taught doesn’t translate online and results in content that is overwritten with too much content and context and too little focus on action.
• The Ultimate Blogger Writing Guide
  From Copyblogger: Eight important writing tips as they apply to blogging
• Blog Users Don’t Read, They Scan… Write Accordingly
  From Social Media Today: Post by Michael Gass with useful advice on writing for your blog.
• 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang
  From Copyblogger: 5 ways to open your post that will capture the reader’s imagination and pull them deeper into your content.
• Webpage Copy Writing – Web Site Resources, Website Tips – WebsiteTips.com
  The tutorials below cover how visitors read content on the Web and how to write effectively for the Web. See also below for specific topics: Writing ‘About Us’ Content for the Web and Writing Headlines and Titles for the Web.
• Writing Well for the Web – webreference.com
  From Web Reference:  Quick and easy tips for non-writers who are getting started on the web.
• What Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists
  From Chrisbrogan.com: Guest post by Anita Bruzzese with advice on web writing for bloggers based on her perspective as a trained journalist.
• 30 Ways to Increase Readability Online
  From Pro Blog Design: Tips for making your blog content more readable.
• “Inverted Pyramid”: How to Write for Social News & Blogs
  From 97 Floor: Advice on writing for readers of Digg, Stumbleupon, Rss Subscribers and other social media users.
• How To Write for Blogs and Social Media: New Media, New Rules!
  In this video, Green Industry Speaker, Video Blogger, Internet Marketer, and Consultant Jeff Korhan explains how to write for Blogs and Social Media to accomplish your purpose.
• 10 Tips for Making Your Blog Posts More del.icio.us
  From Vandelay Website Design: Steps to take to encourage users to save and share your articles on the social bookmarking site Delicious in order to drive website traffic – including how you write the content itself.
• The 6 Cs of Killer Web Writing
  From Gerry McGovern: Rundown of six ‘C’s to keep in mind when you sit down to write: Who Cares? Is it Compelling? Is it Clear? Is it Complete? Is it Concise? Is it Correct?
• How to Write Copy for Short Attention Spans
  From Copyblogger: Advice from Sherice Jacob on writing in fast-paced world where the majority of people will only read the first few lines of what you write.

• Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview
  McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Robert Lanham offers a hilarious take on writing in the Internet age.

Writing Strong Headlines and Titles

• 25 Action Words for Writing a Newsworthy Headline
  From PR Leap Blog: A list of 25 action words and 25 sample headlines from the pressrooms of Apple Computers, Yahoo!, Google, IBM and T-Mobile:
• How to Craft Post Titles that Draw Readers Into Your Blog
  From Problogger: Solid discussion of why blog post titles matter and 8 tips for creating successful blog titles.
• How To Write Great Headlines
  From Modern Life is Rubbish: Whether you’re a blogger, a journalist or social bookmarker, writing a great headline is a must if you want to capture your reader’s interest. Faced with an ever increasing wave of blogs, RSS subscriptions, and links, the headline is more important now than it ever has been.
• Headline writing: How web and print headlines differ
  From New Media Bytes: Review of how headlines are different for print vs. the web and a review of best practices for writing headlines for people, search engines and social media.
• 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work
  From Copyblogger: Ideas for attention-grabbing headlines you can use with your blog posts
• Writing Better Web Page Titles
  From Social Patterns: One of the easiest things you can do to optimize a web page is to write a better title for it. Aside from writing great content, learning how to write better titles is the best thing you can do for your web page. Here’s some advice on how to do this.
• How to Write Magnetic Headlines
  From Copyblogger: Excellent series of posts on writing headlines for your blog or website articles.
• 10 Blog Post Title Templates That Work Like Gangbusters
  From BlogBuildingU: A dozen compelling blog post title templates to get you more clicks and readers.
• Write Great Titles For Your Blog Posts
  From Master New Media: How to write blog titles that will get you greater visibility and exposure on major search engines.
• How To Craft Kick-Ass Title Tags & Headlines
  From SEO Book: Advice on strategies for writing headlines that will help you with your search engine optimization.
• 8 Ways of Creating Compelling Blog Post Titles
  From Content Writing and Copywriting Blog: 8 steps you can take to create compelling blog post titles
• Writing Killer Web Headings and Links
  From Gerry McGovern: Advice on getting the first couple of words exactly right when attempting to write effective web headings and links.

Writing for Twitter

• Copywriting for Twitter: 10 ways to make every tweet count
  From Econsultancy: With a massive amount of tweets posted every second, here’s some advice for making sure your tweets are heard through all the noise.
• Everything I Need to Know About Twitter I Learned in J School
  From Mashable: Anne Handley, Editor in Chief of MarketingProfs does a fantastic job of showing how the tenets of good journalism can be applied to writing effectively for Twitter- from “making every word count” to “keeping it simple” to “providing context” and more.
• How to Write a Twitter-Worthy Headline
  From SmartBlog On Social Media: Andy Sernovitz serves up his tips on writing strong Twitter headlines that will be re-tweeted- from “telling the complete story in the headline” to “using copywriter tricks – compelling terms like ‘how-to’ and ‘3 tips’ that will help get your tweets forwarded” and more.
• 15 Kick-Ass Retweet Tips for Writers
  From Econsultancy: Some suggested techniques that writers and bloggers – not to mention traditional journalists – can adopt to improve the retweetability of their articles – from using “awesome adjectives” to “leaving a little extra space for the retweeter to append the tweet with a comment” and more.
• An Unofficial Twitter Style Guide
  From Grammar Girl: Tips for better Twitter postings.
• How to get ReTweeted – The Formula
  From Twitips: In this post Louise Doherty (@louisedoherty) shares a formula to help you increase the chances of being ReTweeted.
• 6 Ways to Maximize the Use of Your 140 Characters
  From Twitips: Mark Fulton provides some tips for making the most of those few characters you get to use when using Twitter (140 to be exact).
• How to write Twitter-friendly Headlines
  From Brian Armsey: A few tips on Twitter-optimized headline writing.
• The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines
  From Copyblogger: Advice from Brian Clark on writing compelling headlines on Twitter from headlines. One piece of advice – craft headlines that promise readers a compelling reward by offering something “useful to the reader” or providing readers with a “sense of urgency.”

Writing for Search Engines

• SEO Copywriting 2.0
  From Copyblogger: An SEO Copywriting 2.0 tutorial designed to provide a step-by-step strategy for creating content that scores links and ranks well in search engines in five easy lessons.
• Google & SEO Friendly Page Titles
  From SEO Book: Video and article with tips on creating search friendly page titles for your web pages.
• This Boring Headline Is Written for Google
  From New York Times: Discussion of writing good web headlines to help with SEO.
• Use Old Words When Writing for Findability
  From Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox: Advice on why you should use familiar words to increase your odds of people finding your content via search engines.
• Working Words: How to Write for SEO
  From Econsultancy: Nice post that explores best practices in SEO copywriting.
• Writing Killer Web Headings and Links
  From Gerry McGovern: Advice on getting the first couple of words exactly right when attempting to write effective web headings and links.
• The Top 10 Twitter SEO Tips
  From Mashable: How to write your tweets to ensure they rank well in Google search results.

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