Page 74 - How to write effective business English your guide to excellent professional communication by Fiona Talbot

Telling your story through social media 63

● Apple: Think different
●
● Nike: Just do it
●
● KitKat: Have a break… have a KitKat
●
(Just listen to the sound of the ‘k’ in the KitKat slogan. You can
almost hear the sound of the biscuit breaking! That’s effective
writing.) Alliteration can also help engagement – for brands
such as PayPal, Coca-Cola, Dunkin’ Donuts as well as for arti-
cles or videos: ‘Colloquialisms Can Confuse’.

● ● Posts with calls to action (more on this shortly).
● ● Facts and infographics.
See how Step 3 in the word power skills system in Chapter 2 –
‘Make the right impact’ – will help you greatly here.
When online, you might like to check how global media com-
pany Buzzfeed Inc. master digital sharing of ‘the most social con-
tent on the web’. Notice how they customize the home page for the
country, eg United States, Australia, India, etc. Get a feel for what
might work for you. But don’t lift copy or images and use them as
your own or you could face plagiarism charges.

Call people to action – and check

it’s worked

An important element of social media is checking that it worked. If
you go unnoticed, it might as well be money down the drain. So it
never harms to hammer home this message: build in effective calls
to action as if your life depended on it. You want people to react.
Better, you want them to discuss positively, even evangelize. Mostly
in business we need buy-in and sales. Ogilvy and Mather aren’t
afraid to state: ‘We sell or else’.
Express, where feasible, what you want people to do next, in all
your written tasks. Your focus in social media may be selling mes-
sages about brand, but you can still hope to convert to sales at a