How online copywriting has progressed since its inception – with tweets!
Thirty years ago, copywriting used to be limited to direct mail and print ads. Ten years ago, we started to see an increased focus on online copywriting for websites, landing pages and even blogs. Now, there are several items on every online copywriter’s agenda worth refining. Tweets, Facebook posts and email subject lines are the digital equivalents of print media headlines.
The best snippets of “micro-copy” persuade the user to click, open and read the page or post that follows. Now when you’re copywriting a headline, it’s being repurposed for three different medium. Unfortunately, they have their own rules.
Tweets
Twitter allows 140 characters in a tweet, but copywriters must work within 120 characters in order to allow room for a link. Even more, there are hashtags and @’s to consider. A good Twitter copywriter knows not only how to write a tweet, but how to make it interactive.
Facebook has a new limit of 500 characters for a status update and does not truncate the message in any way. If you want to add a link, the maximum status length is 420 characters. Copywriting on Facebook allows you extra room to elaborate, but brevity is the key when your goal is to get someone to click a link. Give them enough to hook them, but not enough to make them think they don’t need to know more.
Email subject lines
Every smart email copywriter knows that no matter how brilliant your email newsletter is, it won’t matter without an equally brilliant email subject line that gets people to open it. Some email clients such as AOL and Hotmail truncate the email subject line if it is longer than 45-51 characters. Other email clients permit up to 80+ characters. Generally, shorter email subject lines produce higher open and click-through rates.
And if this wasn’t enough to add to your plate, you also need to learn your share of SEO copywriting too! But if you’re still not ready for SEO, read The Five Stages of SEO Denial for a little pick-me-up!
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