Honing Your Writing Skills Through Social Media

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Now that you are writing content and posting it on your chosen social media channels, your writing skills are bound to be improving. Even if you were a great writer before, social media can help you become even better.

When you write content for business, your approach to the language should be totally different than it is if you are posting content for personal use. The language that you use for business is much more formal than when you are sharing it with friends and family. The chances are great that the quality of your writing is a lot better now than when you first started writing and posting your content. The approach that you now take is much less selfish and focuses much more on other people. It is geared to reaching out to them and addressing their needs and wants. The following points may illustrate the differences that you see from your original writing to your writing style now:

  • More “them” and less “you”: You now write a lot less about what you need and want and how wonderful you are. Instead, you gear your writing toward how you can help other people to solve their problems. In other words, you practice the marketing principle of “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me).
     
  • Clear and concise: Your writing used to be verbose and unending. Now, you write clearly and concisely. You choose your words very carefully, knowing that your readers don’t have the time or the patience to read encyclopedias. At the same time, you want to give them something of value that they can benefit from.
     
  • No editing required: You no longer see the value in big words that are only used for the sake of appearing impressive. They serve no purpose for your readers (or, in turn, for you). Knowing (or hoping) that your content will be shared by others, the last thing that you want is for someone else to have to edit what you post in order to make it suitable to share with other people. If your content needs to be edited, people will not make the effort as frequently to share it as they would if all they had to do was push to button to send it to other people.
     
  • Social media appropriateness: Writing content for social media is very different than writing content for any other medium. You are now able to effectively communicate your ideas in short and compelling ways. If you have a lot more that you feel you want to write on any given subject, you use a different forum (such as a blog or Ebook) to do so.
     
  • No more writer’s block: You used to experience writer’s block quite frequently. Now that you have been writing for a while, your creative juices are flowing more easily than ever before. One of your biggest sources of inspiration can be what other people are writing. Ideas for your content can come from many different sources.
     
  • Interactive discussions: You are involved with a lot of interactive discussions based on the content that you are posting and sharing. Those discussions (on many occasions) result in ideas for more content. People love to know that their needs are being met and that their interests are being satisfied. If you write on topics that other people tell you they would like to read about, you will be building strong relationships and they will eventually become loyal customers of yours.
     
  • Write everyday: The more you write, the better your writing skills will be. If you make it a point of writing something every single day, you will find that the effort will pay off for you. By writing everyday, you are forcing yourself to evaluate your work carefully and really hone your skills, including identifying both your strong and weak points.

Conclusion

As important as it is to be persistent and consistent when it comes to your writing online, it is also important to make sure that you manage your time effectively when it comes to your involvement in social media. You should make a commitment for a certain, finite amount of time and stick as closely to that as you possibly can. When you are not interacting (or doing other important, work-related, necessary things), you should continue to hone your writing skills. The more you write, the better a writer you will become. Other people are bound to appreciate the quality of your writing and you will be tremendously proud of what you have accomplished.

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Author

  • Carolyn Cohn

    Carolyn Cohn is the Co-Founder & Chief Creative Services of CompuKol Communications. Carolyn manages CompuKol’s creative and editorial department, which consists of writers and editors. Her weekly blogs are syndicated globally. She has decades of editorial experience in online editing, and editing books, journal articles, abstracts, and promotional and educational materials. Carolyn earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.

6 Responses

  1. Arnold says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: eMarketing Association Off-Topic Group
    Discussion: Honing Your Writing Skills Through Social Media

    I hope so.expressing thoughts through writing, has never been one of my best skills.
    Posted by Arnold

  2. Elisabeth Higgins says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: The Content Wrangler Community
    Discussion: Honing Your Writing Skills Through Social Media

    I have certainly learned to be more concise. I loved email at first because it seemed to be an extension of belles lettres, and I carried on long, intense correspondences with old friends, political acquaintances, music fans etc. However, the people I work with professionally as an editor, want brevity to the point of curtness–even rudeness. Twitter is too tight a form for me, but I have learned a lot through Facebook. My mini-travelogues through the West's national parks and wilderness areas by mobility scooter we a great way to trim and condense my insights with improved punch. One of my favorite clients, the journalist John Dickerson, senior political editor at Slate and political news bureau chief at CBS, has achieved a giant following at twitter because of his witty, insightful posts on everything from parenting issues, to nature, to poetry, to life on the road following campaigns. I highly recommend following him to see that with literature, you can use social media as a form, just as poets use sonnets or rondelays.
    Posted by Elisabeth Higgins

  3. Christopher says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Non-Fiction Writers
    Discussion: Honing Your Writing Skills Through Social Media

    I would agree that writing skills may improve from constant writing in social media sites. One exception is Twitter though. There you may feel compelled not to use proper grammar in order to properly fit your message into 160 characters. Examples of this are replacing the word YOU with U or using DON'T instead of DO NOT. Though using "don't" is proper, it is normally avoided in any professional writing. But in Twitter you DON'T have much of a choice. The beautiful thing about Twitter is that if you send out a compelling tweet about an article and people click on that tiny link to go read it, it does not matter how short that tweet is. It still lead to your main purpose for the reader.
    Posted by Christopher

  4. Ananya says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Harvard Business Review
    Discussion: Honing Your Writing Skills Through Social Media

    @Carolyn, that is absolutely correct and I agree with you completely. Ever since I've been using linked in my writing skills has improved.
    Posted by Ananya

  5. Vannie Ryanes says:

    Excellent article. I agree with all points, especially "The more you write, the better your writing skills will be."

  6. Robert Medak says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: "Write It Down"-A Website for Writers
    Discussion: Honing Your Writing Skills Through Social Media

    With the limit of some social media sites concerning the number of characters, one should become a tighter writer and learn to make their meaning clear in few words, as long as they continue to use the rules of proper grammar and punctuation.
    Posted by Robert Medak