As a Marketing Director for a major company, I always look for ways to stand-out from the crowd. This topic really is intriguing to me. I think down the road it will be the real difference-maker, especially with the mobile movement and the way social media is turning to captions and fewer and fewer characters. You need to get people’ attention and do it in a way that people will see your message in a matter of seconds.
I am sure you have seen all kinds of captions too on Twitter, Pinterest and Linkedin
Some of the common headlines that I see are the following:
“Breaking News” “Just Posted” “Top Stories” ALL CAPS POST
“Top 5, Top 10″ “Good Morning” “Good Night” “#hashtag topic”
My point here is that we really need to think about this whole phenomenon that is occurring.
How do you get reader’s attention? (Some items to remember)
- You only have a few seconds to engage someone and to lead them to the next item: blog link, news item, picture or your follow-up message, (Twitter)
- You need to think about what you are posting and find a way to stand out from the crowd.
- Put some type of announcement or action statement. (Remember you want people to either read or act)
- Check out people’s tweets. I have found that people do develop their own unique style of posting information.
- Remember to change your writing with respect to the platform. Tweets on Facebook look out of place to me. Do you agree?
Some of the biggest learning’s I have discovered are the following:
TWITTER – Try keeping your posts to 10 words or less.
GOOGLE+ – Learn how to format your text Write 1-2 sentence captions.
LINKEDIN – Write a brief sentence statement – Remember you are writing to professionals, many of whom only use Linkedin
FACEBOOK– Write more from a friend standpoint
PINTEREST – 400 characters to use for your caption and key words.
What are some things that are working for you with respect to headlines? I know I will keep trying things and I am sure someone will write a book on this subject in the near future.