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Writing for Social Media: 7 Tips and Tools
Alright, here we go. Another day, another awesome plethora of writing tips. Today’s is coming from one of our fav owls at Hootsuite! And we’re not wasting any time. Let’s get right into it:
1. Barf it out. Yep, you read it right. Just let it all go like in your college days. Hootsuite wants you to punch writer’s block right in the ol’ gut by just typing anything.
Don’t worry about sentence structure, spelling, grammar, nothing! Don’t let your fingers up. Don’t even go to the bathroom!
2. Write to an 8th grader. This is said a lot but is mostly taken as, “write dumber.” And that’s ridiculous. The point is to get rid of the jargon and tech-y terms. Speak like you’re with your buddy at a bar. Do the hard thing and say something real.
5. Your reader should feel successful. We really hope you guys feel successful. That’s pretty much all we want.
Adjust for this with a little formatting like adding breaks, single lines, bold things, transition lines, bullet points, and so on.
7. Use pictures. Period. They add breaks in a sea of words and can help those visual learners. It’s straight up essential in today’s digital age.
Now, on to the tools…
- Session Buddy is a free Chrome extension that reduces browser clutter. If your to-do list includes blogging and 50 other things, this is a tool for you.
- Hemingway App helps you write clearly. It’s free online but the desktop app is $19.99. Hemingway can really help with the tips above.
- Markdown takes plain text format and converts it to HTML to post on any platform.
- Zenpen keeps the distractions at bay when writing. And it’s free. Marketers get pulled in every direction by the hour. It’s nice to have something that will keep you focused.
- Grammarly helps you write error-free. In fact, we’re using Grammarly right now to make sure this write-up is in tip-top shape.
Your homework is to finish this article before the week is out. We’ll have a quiz Friday morning!
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20 Conversion Optimization Tips for Zooming Past Your Competition
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). It sounds boring and complex, but it ain’t. Well…okay it is a little complex.
But a landing page that has had some CRO done on it, can make a huuuuuge difference for your company’s bottom line. You wanna make a difference, right? Good. That’s why you need to learn CRO.
To help you along, Unbounce put together this list of 20 CRO Tips. We’ve got a few of them below, but we suggest you read this whole blog yourself.
CRO Tip 1: Learn to run A/B tests properly.
A/B tests are essential to CRO. A few rules your A/B tests absolutely have to follow:
- Always determine a sample size in advance
- Run your experiment for a few full business cycles
- Choose an overall evaluation criterion
- Clearly write your hypothesis
If you don’t do those 4 things before conducting your A/B tests, you’re gonna have a bad time.
CRO Tip 8 (we skipped a few): Pick low hanging fruit first.
You gotta fix the bigger problems with your landing page before focusing on the smaller things. For example, testing different headlines is pretty useless if your page loads super slowly or pages don’t load properly on certain browsers.
CRO Tip 9: Where possible, reduce friction.
Friction on a website makes it difficult for a user to complete a task. If you make potential customers create a full profile before checking out, that’s likely too much friction. A few ways to cut down on friction:
- Make your site load fast. Really fast.
- Cut out useless form fields.
- Reduce the number of steps in your checkout/signup flow.
CRO Tip 11: Clarity > Persuasion.
Everyone wants to write grandiose, compelling statements on their websites. But often the simple, clear statements convert much better. When in doubt, try a five-second test to find out how clear your messaging is.
Yikes, that’s only 4 tips out of 20, but we’re outta room. You know what to do from here 👇
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#GirlsDoPoop
“It’s society’s dupe that girls don’t poop.”
Yes, that’s right, today’s Watch is all about poop. It’s a spoken word film from Poo-Pourri that’s packed with a mother-lode of poo puns. The 84-second spot is all about women. It’s time to admit…no…admit isn’t the right word…it’s time to drop some knowledge:
Women poop.
Some of our favorite lines from this ad:
- “So get those gender rules off of our stools.”
- “We’re all born to be number one at number two”
- “Everybody drops turds. To deny it is absurd”
Copywriting genius in here…
Remember GenM from yesterday’s Daily Carnage? They help connect businesses in-need with fully-trained marketing apprentices who are ready to work. If your marketing team needs a little help, give GenM a shout.
It gets even better — they’re giving you guys $25 off your membership. You just saved money by reading this newsletter.
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Good to know that Scott Tissue has had our back (heh, pun intended) since the ’30s!
