Sarah Meaney, from Comet Branding, emphasized ways to write for social media; and the differences between it and AP writing throughout her presentation tonight. There were some points in particular I felt stood out to me the most to use in the future. She mentioned that it was important for writers to highlight key words to keep readers on page because they don’t read. She explained that this is because social media readers scan more than anything. People also decide to read more meaningful headlines than clever ones so they don’t have to think about what the article’s all about.
The inverted pyramid is also used in social media, like news stories, as people don’t spend much time reading on a page. This was appealing as I thought social media was a lot like editorials, but they use the normal pyramid. She said that it’s important to boil it down to the “who” and “what” as soon as possible in order to get the point across. Moreover, it’s imperative to use numerals over spelling out numbers (unlike what we've learned in AP writing). This is because it’s proven to be more appealing to the eye and psychologically make more sense. However, if it’s not a specific fact, it is acceptable to spell out numbers like “thousands.”
So what exactly is “Comet Branding?” I learned that it helps clients connect with their customers as well as possible. One particular aspect I’ll especially remember from her presentation to help a writer connect with his/her audience was a guideline of things to think about when writing online. This guideline consisted of tone, voice, flow, content, format, and length. I thought this was a good guideline to think about in order to keep your target audience as interested as possible.
Overall, I thought her presentation was very compelling, as I’m used to writing formal papers for classes in college. It resembled my Writing for Multimedia class very well as our homework includes writing for social media, such as blogs and Twitter updates. Her helpful tips and information will make it easier for me to write for social media in the future, as I want to connect with my audience as much as possible.
Comet Branding Website
What is Comet Branding?
Who does Comet Branding help?
Story behind Comet Branding
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I agree with you. I thought her presentation was very interesting. Like you, I took in what she said about writing for multimedia and I'm going to use it in the future. I also liked her website a lot and thought their blog was very interactive.
ReplyDeleteI agree too. I really enjoyed her presentation. I am also definitely going to be using her advise in my Tweets and blog posts.
ReplyDeleteAlthough her presentation and ideas were extremely well done, I wished that we could've seen some more examples of the clients they had done work for. We only saw one and I thought it wasn't much, so I can't be sure of all the services they offer.
ReplyDeleteI thought her ideas were great in the presentation I feel that she would have done more. I enjoyed the presentation but feel content was lacking.
ReplyDeleteYou did a good job of summing up the presentation. I also liked the guidlines for connecting with your audience...tone, voice, flow, content, format, and length. Keeping these things in mind will help my writing on the web.
ReplyDeleteWhat was interesting about her presentation is she told us all things we do. None of us ever read an entire article online or search through pages and pages of information to find what we want. We're so used to having information in an instance that we don't care to dig for it. However, I never even thought of that when writing in my articles. Just gotta learn to practice what we preach.
ReplyDeleteI think that its a great idea to use the inverted pyramid style because you get to the point right away! This is helpful because, much like most web users, i find myself scaning web sites as well.
ReplyDeleteShe gave good information on what to put into tweets and blogs that will be helpful to know in the future. Also the information on how much people actually read was pretty shocking. After hearing these stats I realized that I am always scanning when I am on the internet also so I guess we all are guilty of this.
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