Writing for Social Media: Tips for Success

In some ways, writing for social media is very different from the kinds of writing that college students do in their other classes.  In web-based writing, the rules of grammar are much more flexible, the tone is more personal and conversational, and graphic elements like fonts, colors, images, animations, layout, and design have a greater importance than they do in the composition of a research paper, lab report, or exam essay. 

But, on a more basic level, writing is writing, in whatever form it takes.  The fundamental principles of communication and self-expression apply to online writing, academic writing, creative writing, and any other human project.  Identifying these fundamental principles not only helps us write effective online content; it can also provide insight into best practices that support innovative and impactful thinking in any space.

1.     Listen to your heart.  Anything meaningful that anyone has to say – anything important, authentic, and potentially world-changing – always begins as an inner understanding.  Someone – or some group of people – perceives something about how they feel, a way of thinking, a question or belief.  Sometimes it’s a very clear understanding; sometimes it’s a dim intuition, but, in any case, that spark of insight is something that has never existed in the world before – a new idea, an original thought.  Everyone is full of these profound insights that flicker in the back of their minds all the time.  The writer’s job begins by chasing these butterflies, capturing a few, and encouraging them to reproduce, evolve and fly out into the world.

2.     Think about who you’re talking to.  All communication is a two-way street.  As important as it is to nurture your own original ideas, it is equally important to think about the perspective of your “ideal reader,” the person you think about when you think about who is on the other side of the conversation.  Usually, the ideal reader is some alternate version of yourself, but it may actually be a literal reader – a fiend or community of people that you want to address.  Think about who those readers are.  What kinds of things get their attention?  What are they expecting?  How can you give them what they want, while also giving them something new that they didn’t know that they wanted?

3.     Take risks.  All communication is a step out into the void.  We never really know how other people will perceive what we write or say, if it will mean anything to anyone else, or if what we wrote or said accurately reflects how we think and feel.  Indeed, this is one of the reasons why people write and talk, so they can better understand the meaning of their own ideas and their own words by passing them through the perceptions of other people.  Communicating well means leaping out into this void, never really knowing what lies on the other side, but trusting that the leap will form a bridge across the void, helping us all feel more connected to one another.

4.     Always be adapting.  Effective communication is not a formula, it’s an improvised performance.  Stand-up comedians have to read the room and be agile enough to adapt their delivery to meet the mood of the crowd.  A basketball player needs to adjust their game depending on the varying strengths and weaknesses of different opponents.  To have a good conversation, a friend needs to be responsive to how their friend is feeling.  Likewise, effective writers learn through trial and error about how to flex into new styles of writing, new genres, new audiences, and new ideas.    

5.     Just do it!  If you wait until you have it all figured out, you will never start.  This is true of writing as well as of many other endeavors in life.  Planning is good, research is good, forethought is good, but, for a writer – in any medium – the ultimate good is doing the work: generating sentences, putting ideas into words, manifesting consciousness in the form of pixels and ink.  If you’re writing, you’re learning about writing and getting better at it, whether you realize it or not.  So get started!