Writing for Social Media Platforms

Writing for Social Media

    Social media has been an over growing concept since its creation. It has developed into subcategories with different apps and content sharing specific to the app. Even though they all are different platforms with individualized features, they all serve the same purpose- to communicate and share information to a public audience. Like all media, it is important to understand what you are creating, how you're creating it, and who you are creating it for. Social media has become one of the number one sources for news and popular happenings around the world. The amount of people who have access to posts makes it important to report accurately and ethically. 

    Some ways to effectively write for the internet are the following:

        - Know the platform. When creating a piece for a specific site, understand the typical format and style of a post and cater to it. For TikTok you would make a short video not a long descriptive text, and Twitter would be a short paragraph, not a 10 second obscure video.

        - Know your audience. How you address people is a huge part of everyday life, you don't talk to your boss how you talk to your significant other. You don't address you grandparents how you do your friends. Finding your target audience is important to a successful post.

        -Write for skimming. Let's be honest, you've never fully read something you didn't skim before deciding if it was interesting enough.

    

     In class we talked about how different social medias were good for different contexts. Facebook is good for longer posts for an older audience so politics would be a really good topic, where as Twitter is better for a quick headliner with an update. Identifying differences and writing for known, selected audiences will ensure a successful post that will get the point across.