An Intern’s Guide To The Social Galaxy

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of social media. Where cats memes are as common as the cold, and copy must be condensed into 140 characters or less. Yes, the socialsphere is vast and confusing. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Tumblr, Yik Yak; the list goes on. When it comes to advertising, these platforms become even trickier to navigate. Luckily, my internship at Chatterblast has provided me with a content creation guidebook of sorts. So here’s a few things to keep in mind when crafting those tweets, posts and blogs to digital perfection.

5) Be Disruptive

Disruptive. This word is likely used by our creative director upwards of 500 times a day. Okay, so that’s a severe exaggeration, but I know of at least 4 people who would attest to his adoration of that term. The online world moves much faster than the real world. Blink once and your post is halfway down the timeline. Readers are practically drowning in content. It’s crucial that you catch their attention immediately. This is done by using disruptive language of course. If your post seems a little humdrum, try to play with the wording a bit. Here’s a blogging trick; bold and italicize any important words, titles and names. It’s a really simple way to grab attention. Whatever you do, just remember that sticking out in the crowd is a good thing!

4) Keep it Short and Sweet

I read an article a few days ago that said humans now have the attention span of a goldfish. Goldfish! If this is true, I think we have some deeper issues that need to be addressed. In any case, it’s clear that lengthy copy (in most circumstances) is a thing of the past. Take Twitter for instance, you need to be able to communicate a message in 140 characters, less if there’s a link or picture involved. This can be tricky. Just make sure that every post is communicating a clear message first, and worry about
adding the creative flair later.

3) Learn to Love Lists

If there’s one thing I learned from my internship at Chatterblast, it’s that people are absolutely head-over-heels in love with listicles. You could be writing about the most mind-numbingly boring topic, but throw it into list format and add a catchy headline, and you’re in blogging business. Don’t get me wrong, I love them just as much as the next guy. Perusing Buzzfeed articles is my not-so-guilty pleasure. In fact, It’s my list love that inspired this post to begin with.

2) Find Your Voice

Every company has a voice, and every voice is different. This is crucial to remember when working on an advertisement, no matter the format. It’s also the reason that we are given creative briefs before starting a project. Read these briefs, study them, understand exactly how the client wants to sound. Sometimes it’s helpful to think of a celebrity who captures that voice. Once you decide on one, stalk their social media a bit, see how they write, mimic them. It’s only slightly creepy, really.

1) Be Relevant

It doesn’t matter if you’re the greatest writer to ever walk the earth, if you’re not writing content that is relevant to the client, you won’t get anywhere. Google is a never ending black hole of information, use it. If you’re having a hard time coming up with a new idea, find a news article or blog post that somehow relates to your client. The resources are everywhere, you just have to find them.

You’ve got your guide, so run free you social media mavens. Grab your creativity and a keyboard, and go conquer that expansive, highly entertaining social galaxy we all know and love/hate.