Content Mastery Guide

Editor and Ghostwriter

Social Media Writing Sin #2 – Misspelling and Mistyping

By

It's no secret that I am committed to the quality of your content. And that includes the quality of your social media writing.

Your social media posts have a job to do – whether it's to attract new followers who share your way of thinking, deepen your relationships with your community, or invite people to take an action or click on a link.

Doh

Typos are embarrassing enough, whether they're caused by spelling errors, commonly misused words, or just a slip of the keys. Combined with grammatical errors or confusing sentence fragments, these writing issues can cause needless embarrassment, lost readers or damage to your reputation or credibility.

Social Media Writing Sin #1 – Texting Like a Teenager

By

Texting-teens Yes, I know that it's difficult to say everything you want to say when social media platforms limit the length of your posts (on Twitter you've only got 140 characters!).

Yes, I know that you want to capture your up-to-the-minute musings via your mobile device – and that you're only using your thumbs to do it!

But you're still writing, and quality still counts.

Using texting-style abbreviations like UR or GR8 may save you space, but it comes at the expense of your credibility. If your ideal clients are teens, then go for it, but otherwise, I challenge you to write your messages using full words.

While some of the people I love and respect the most (you know who you are) use plenty of these abbreviations, they already had my love and respect. If my first impression of them had been what I saw on Twitter … who knows?

The upside? This self-editing and enforced brevity will help you focus your writing.

Bonus tips:

  • Abbreviations aren't the same as acronyms (e.g., LOL for laughing out loud or WAHM for work-at-home mother). Go ahead and use those, as long as you're sure your target audience knows the terminology. After all, do you really want your readers to need a dictionary to understand your message?
  • Swearing is something else that's best left to the "cool kids," unless it's truly who you want to be in your brand. Or check out how this blogger shared both "clean" and "sailor mouth" versions of her "Should I Work For Free?" chart.

Warning: Indulging in this social media writing sin can lessen your credibility and limit the effectiveness of your online writing.

Thanks to @AmyCourser for the link to the text messaging glossary!

My Top Five Social Media Writing Sins – Revealed!

Is what you type today going to hurt you tomorrow?

By

As Chris Young pointed out in a recent post, the Internet never forgets, and what you do online today may hurt you tomorrow.

Over the next two weeks, I will be rolling out my list of the Top 5 Social Media Writing Sins. Indulging in any of these sins can lessen your credibility and limit the effectiveness of your online writing.

You could lose the respect of someone who was already warming up to you, or fail to capture the attention of a potentially ideal client.

If you're not seeing the results you want from social media, maybe your writing is to blame! Or maybe you've been hesitant to participate in social media because you're concerned about your reputation or your brand.

If you'd like to learn the ins and outs of writing for social media, check out this presentation:

How to Socialize Your Writing Without Losing Your Credibility

Here's what I'll cover on the call:

  • The Top 5 Social Media Writing Sins (a review)
  • Five social media writing principles that will improve your results and ease your mind
  • Online writing tools that will help you with social media

Content Creation Manifesto #4b – It’s all been said before

By

Last night I was privileged to share the stage with Josh Muirhead of Socialmark Media and Anne Dorsey, Business Librarian at the Barrie Public Library. The topic was "Social Media for Your Business," which attracted more than 40 people. Thanks to everyone who came out to listen and participate!

I was asked to speak about the importance of creating relevant, useful and high-quality online content – a topic I'm certainly passionate about! I decided to share my Content Creation Manifesto, with the addition of this NEW #4:

Content Creation Manifesto #4b – It's all been said before

There is no need to re-invent the wheel of online content. Yes, someone else has written about your area of expertise. Your ideal clients still need to hear it from you – in fact, you might be the only one they can hear it from because you speak exactly the same language.

START NOW by making a list of topics that are highly relevant to your ideal clients. What do you wish you had known when you were in their shoes? What do they ask you about when you meet? What is your unique way of answering?

Head back to the Content Creation Manifesto Summary for links to #1-7.

Trackbacks, Reactions and Link Love – How to connect with someone you wrote about in a blog post

By

Link-lovew150-h113 On January’s Content Mastery Action Day, a member of the Action Club asked, “How do you tell another expert that you’ve mentioned them in your blog post?”

“Link love” (linking back to someone else’s blog or website) is truly a win-win-win proposition. It’s also the heart of connective content – the content you don’t have to create from scratch.

Your readers win because they read and learn about something they may not have discovered otherwise. Hopefully you’ve chosen resources and information that relate to your topic, and hopefully that topic is highly relevant to your readers.

The other bloggers win from having new readers. If they’ve done their own work in producing great content, the right people will be led to follow them. By the way, if that means your reader hires another person instead of you, he or she wasn’t the right client for you in the first place.

You win by having richer content for your blog, introducing different perspectives that you and your readers can learn from, and making connections with other experts in your field.

But how do you get the attention of those experts, especially if you’ve never met or connected online before?

Email, Twitter, trackbacks and tracking

Contact them directly

You can send them a brief email with a link to your post, and let them know you wrote about them. If you are connected via a social network, you can send a direct or private message there as well.

Show up on their screen

There are several ways to show up someone’s screen and get their attention, even if you don’t have direct access to their email.

  • Tweet – I’ll usually post an update to Twitter and include the person’s Twitter ID (example). If you’re posting several tweets about your blog post (as I recommended in a blog post and call about conversation starters), that means two or three more opportunities to connect with that colleague when they see your tweets in their list of “mentions.”
  • Trackback – If you and the other blogger are both set up to enable trackbacks, you can automatically notify the person and even have YOUR blog post displayed in a special section on their blog! First look on their post for a trackback link (example). Then paste that link into the box in your blog post editor (here are screen shots from Typepad and WordPress).
  • Sit back – If the other blogger is monitoring their online mentions, they’ll see you. Especially if you type out their full name in your post (versus just linking from some words that describe the topic). For example:
    • Google Alerts – When someone has an alert set up for their name, your post will show up in their report. This even works for tweets, though I’ve noticed it can take a couple of weeks for tweets to show up in my report.
    • Mention
    • Others? – I know there are many other ways to track who is writing about you and your blog. Please leave me a comment about which one you use and what you like about it.

Everyone wins when you link to high-quality content from your blog. Take the win even further by creating or deepening a relationship with the other expert.