Page 66 - How to write effective business English your guide to excellent professional communication by Fiona Talbot

Telling your story through social media 55

The long and the short of it: past,
present and future

It’s not just short posts that can go viral. Now ‘everyone is a
writer’ – but not everyone is willing or able to write good material
in depth. Articles with detailed information can be highly valuable.
Digital Storytelling has become a big focus of online marketing
and aims at encouraging user-generated content (UGC). Naturally
you must write the right information so people find your posts.
Without discoverability, you won’t get shared! So provide the right
links, photos, etc.
Your stories can be brief but sometimes it’s the detail that makes
them come alive. That’s the beauty of being able to provide a link
in your short post to a fuller article on your website or elsewhere.
As part of the story, consider intriguing your readers – maybe
hold some information back, so they want to explore further. A
link can take them to that valuable ‘more’. But avoid ‘clickbait’ –
the pejorative term to describe captivating links that only take you
to spam advertisements, etc.

CASE STUDY Ogilvy and Mather

Ogilvy and Mather, the most awarded advertising agency in the world,
intersperse old and new content, and long and short blogs/articles, to
create and retain interest.
They embrace the iconic status of their founder, original ‘Mad Man’
David Ogilvy. His words of 1982 still ring true: ‘People who think well,
write well. Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters
and woolly speeches.’
The agency regularly posts his quotes on their website, Facebook
page and Twitter feed. They routinely mix and match language of the
past with today’s, as this Facebook ‘Ogilvyism’ post shows: