Hey Petpreneurs! Jane here… we’re going to dive into how to create short form written content.
The idea here is to get comfortable creating multiple variations on a single theme to get readers to your article. Together, we’re going to tackle:
- Reviewing some important reminders about writing in general
- Distribution channel basics – which should you use and why?
- Grabbing attention and getting users to click
- Simple strategies for drafting multiple variations on a theme
I know that this is a topic that can really set a lot of hackles raising. Writing in general can be very stressful for a lot of Petpreneurs. And I wanted to just share with you again, that you are in good hands. The tips that I’m sharing here are from more than 18 years of experience being editor in chief of Pet Health Network, head of consumer communication for Petfinder and writing for many of the industry’s biggest publications. I’m also grabbing a whole number of tips that I’ve learned from the rest of our team here at cause digital marketing, where we have senior editors and even teachers who teach business writing on a regular basis. So I am mining everyone’s tips and presenting them here for you.
So starting off with a quick reminder, short form is very similar to long form content with a few little tweaks. When writing for business, keep in mind that:
- Perfection is in the eye of the beholder.
- Grammar doesn’t matter until the very last step (don’t self-edit).
- Perfectionism and fear are what delay things in short-form content.
- Short and sweet is best for 99% of pieces
So for today’s target format, we’re going to create short form pieces that suit 99% of business writing needs. This means that our turnout will be 10 to 150 words each, they will compel the reader to join your world, they’ll build trust or authority and drive a simple conversion or immediate action – typically driving someone to read your long form article that you’ve been writing.
So where does this go? Short form content works in so many different formats and in so many different channel, most notably newsletters, social media posts and print media. These are all great examples of short form content that can drive to a longer form piece on a website or wherever else you choose to host it. So any of these places would be appropriate for the kind of content we’re talking about today.
Are you ready? Let’s dive in!
All short form writing involves three core things.
Grabbing attention. Where you break readers from whatever else they’re doing, you need to find a way to get them to pay attention to you.
Creating immediate understanding. One of the best ways to get people to pay attention to you is to immediately help them understand that you are speaking to them and this is seomthign they want. If you’re not conveying those two things in an instant, then you’ve lost the battle. Conveying “hey, i’m talking to you and you want to pay attention because…” is SUPER important.
Driving an action. Where you drive readers to take a specific action. Telling them how to learn more RIGHT NOW. Checking out this article on my blog, etc.
There are four big mistakes that most people make when they’re creating short form content:
- Assuming that if you say it, they see it. Repititiron, especially on social media, is critical. For Facebook alone, for most posts, only about 10% of your audience will actually be seeing any of your posts at any given time. (And that’s a pretty good turnout with current Facebook algorithms). This means sharing the same information in mutliple formats, and at multiple times, is critical to getting your content seen.
- Starting with what’s important to you, not them. This is a great way to lose your audiences’ attention pretty quick. For example, if you’re selling products like harnesses and you are talking about the quality of the harness, but not the ease of walking in that harness, you’re going to lose your ideal customer pretty quickly. Always start with what’s important to them, not you.
- Asking for an action that’s not easy. We see this most commonly on social platforms like Instagram, where people say, “hey, go check out my website,” But unless you have 10,000 or more followers, it’s virtually impossible to include a link on Instagram. So, to be able to click through to that article, they have to take several actions: they have to close out of the post, go to your profile, find the right post, then click on the link. So make sure that whatever action you’re asking for on that platform is easy.
- Overthinking it. A lot of people are really afraid of getting it wrong. They’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. And this is where I really always bring in the kiss. acronym, Keep It Simple Stupid. It does not matter if we end up sounding stupid. It doesn’t matter if we sound silly or even make a mistake. If we’re sitting there overthinking and worrying about being perfect all the time, our message is not getting out there. So just recognize that sometimes you’re going to have to say, sorry, sometimes you’re going to have to correct yourself. You should try to be accurate as much as you can, but don’t worry about getting everything exactly righ all the time.
When you do share, share often and everywhere. Share each long form piece you do in three different ways over the next three months in whatever social channels you choose. Also feature it in your newsletter at least once, sometimes more. To illustrate this, I put together a quick chart of what most people think happens versus what really happens when it comes to content distribution.
On the left-hand side, we have what most people think happens. That your article is published the day you send it out on Facebook or via your newsletter or LinkedIn or whereever, people get so excited about it that all these readers share it and that just drives a lot of traffic to your website.
In reality, what really happens to drive traffic to a website is much more like what’s on the right side. You publish your article, you share it to Facebook immediately, but then you also drive and draft two or three additional Facebook posts to go out over the next several weeks or months to go to that same post. You also share it one to two times in your newsletter, you share it about three times in your Instagram feed over the next month or so, you send it to local media and follow up with those local media, you post it to Pinterest, you create Facebook ads around it, etc.
Readers share what they encounter. So by putting it out there on as many platforms and as many channels as you can meet those consumers or your audience on, even if it’s B2B, whatever it is, wherever you can meet them, you want to serve this content. It does not matter if it’s the same highlights, same facts across different channels – believe me – there is not enough overlap in these for that to be a bother to your audience.
The more you’re able to share your posts in more places, the better audience you will grow.
THE FACTS: One piece of long form content may easily need as many as 20 different short form pieces to promote it.
Okay, don’t panic. I know this sounds like a lot, but I’m going to show you how to start this simply, make it easy and get to where you need to be for your business.
Most short form pieces can be written in 15 minutes or less with a little practice. So to do that, we’re going to go through an exercise. I want you to grab your piece of paper and your highlighters and look at your article…
Let’s Get Started!
Step One: In one highlight or color, I want you to take a moment and highlight something your reader might be feeling before reading this piece. Highlight anything in that piece that may pertain to that question. So any insights about maybe they’re feeling anxiety, maybe they’re feeling excitement, whatever it is, make sure you are highlighting those in one color.
Step Two: I want you to take your second highlight color and answer this: What’s something that might surprise or intrigue your reader? Go through with the second highlight color and highlight anything in your piece that might surprise or intrigued your reader.
And now you have it. These are your short form topics! These are the things that are going to create your highlights and create the basis of each short form piece. If you’re looking at your article, you probably have at a minimum five or so highlights on your page. Each one of those highlights makes for a potential short form piece. You never want to include more than one highlight in each short form piece because it’s just too much information in the short form format. So, whatever it is on your page, you have that many short form topic ideas right here already.
Step Three: I want you to take each of those sentences and transcribe them into your word document. Once you have each of those transcribed into your word document, I want you to create five different categories – for Facebook, newsletter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest. What you’re going to do is go through and copy/paste each of your highlighted ideas or sentences under one or more of these categories.
Here are the things that tend to perform very well on each of these channels:
For Facebook:
- Surprises and sentiment work well
- Cliffhangers and quesitons are great
- Facts and short stats are ok
For Newsletters:
- Emotion or cliffhangers work best for consumers
- FOMO and function work best for B2B
For LinkedIn:
- Facts, stats or your experience
- Questions about their experience
- Business-appropriate emotions
For Instagram:
- Questions and story rule the day
- KEEP IT SHORT
For Pinterest:
- Suprises and sentiment work well
- Cliffhangers and questions are great
- Emotion or cliffhangers get results, when appropriate
- Facots or SHORT stats
Note: we’re focusing mostly on Facebook, Newsletters and LinkedIn today, because with Instagram and Pinterest, you do need a strong image/graphic to go with, and even be primary over, your copy.
If you have a highlight that feels like it would go under more than one of these copy, then paste it in under both. Don’t overthink it. There are no wrong answers here. If you’re on the edge about whether it should be included, the answer is yes. Go ahead and group each highlight under each of these five channels.
Step Four: Simple copy framework.
For Facebook or LinkedIn consider try a one-liner with a link to your article title. This is something that a lot of brands are really afraid to do, and in some ways it’s just the fear of not enoughness. It’s the fear that including an emoji with a link is just not trying hard enough. Well, I’m here to say BS! In fact, one-liners or simple emoji responses can do very well from a brand if you’re sharing a link or if you’re sharing something that the title is obvious enough that your audience wants to read it. So consider one liners, but if you’re sharing a few sentences, keep it under five. If you’re going over five sentences, typically you’re in the realm of longer form Facebook or LinkedIn posts, and that’s a bit of another animal, pun intended.
For newsletters, there are three important sections to consider:
- Subject line: Something to grab their attention, keeping it under 60 characters. This can be a variation of your article title or some top highlight that really presses on the emotions of the information we covered above.
- Body: Speak to whatever you introduced in the subject line, but personalize it and speak to them and their needs. Consider asking a question to start or using the most compelling highlight under the newsletter section that you added to dive in. Once you’ve done that, tell them in one sentence why you picked this subject and then tell them what they’ll get and why they want to read more. At this point, include your link to your blog post.
- Close: I like to include a quick FYI about a product or service you provide and a link where they can learn more.One of the things that we often find with pet businesses, especially small pet businesses, is that you put a lot of effort in staying in front of folks and then a lot less effort in helping them understand what they can buy from you or how they can help you. So this is a simple way to keep top of mind for them what the products or services you have or do are.
Step Five: Draft your pieces, using your highlights. If you’re doing Facebook or LinkedIn draft three short pieces, each five to 50 words. And if you’re feeling stuck, try thinking of one of these for each of your three pieces:
- One that speaks to your audience and asks a question
- One that makes a statement – if you can be controversial, good!
- One that lets folks know why you wrote this.
Consider keeping these one sentence or at most two, if you can make it work. Then add the link below. Ff instead of Facebook or LinkedIn, you’re going to draft the newsletter, keep it to one newsletter, 50 to 150 words maximum and potentially include an image. Remember, emotion or cliffhangers tend to work best for consumers, and fear of missing out and function work best for B2B.
Okay, congratulations! You either have three social media drafts, mostly done, or you have one great newsletter, mostly done. So you are 90% of the way there!
Step Six: Time to make it S.I.N.G. We want to:
- Save SKIMMABLE highlights: This is probably your subject line or a sentence that you may have already included in all caps in your social media post. It may be some way that you identify your reader, or it may just be a quick fact. Whatever it is, it’s something that helps them understand you are speaking to them and what they’re going to get quickly. If you have a multisentence social media post, for example, consider using this as a single line or all caps social posts, and potentially put it in a stand alone paragraph to help it be seen instead of having it all sit as one paragraph on social. The idea is to make it easy for someone who looks at this for five seconds or less to have a good idea of what they’ll get if they read more. Use these same principles for a newsletter, only consider bolding or using a slightly different font style to bring it out visually.
- IDENTIFY voice elements: Is your brand a rule-follower? A rule breaker? What words might you choose to use that will appeal to your reader? Review your outline for words that don’t make sense to them and replace them. Remember to keep voice in mind as you move forward.
- NIT it together: The quick part! You’ve probably written in full sentences at this point, but if you haven’t, this is creating everything as full sentences and pulling it together cohesively.
- Do final GRAMMAR check: This last step can be saved until tomorrow, as it’s very hard for you to see your grammatical errors right after you draft something. It’s even better to have someone else, who has not seen your copy, to take a look for you.
Now you’re done!
While this process feels rushed at first, practicing it will help you get into a rhythm and really speed it along. Plus, keeping yourself to a loose time goal of 15 minutes per post helps you get to the point, cut out the extraneous info and keep things lighter for the reader. It’s a real win-win. Right now, it’s probably taking you more than 15 minutes per post, but keep that in mind as a goal and as a challenge that you can work towards over the next few weeks. With practice, this can be really easy to churn out. Sticking with three for Facebook or LinkedIn, and one to two newsletters would be a fantastic start!
Don’t forget to have fun! Writing, when you release the anxiety, can be extremely fulfilling – let yourself enjoy it. You just may surprise yourself!