How to Capture Your Reader's Attention
You've written your blog, article, or paper– now what's the best way to get it out into the world? In my last blog, Content is King but Context is God, we learned that you can have fantastic content, but if it's not displayed properly on each platform, it can flop. You need to grab the readers attention on each platform by blending in.
The latest blog I submitted on Medium was titled: What Impact Does Fake News Have on Our Democracy? Here's how I pushed them out on three different social media accounts.
Twitter's platform is meant to be short and to the point. It's limit per post is 280 characters, not leaving you much to work with. I made my post to look "click-baity" in hopes to grab attention. With only two sentences, I make the reader ask themselves if fake news had influenced the outcome of the election, and then pointed them directly to my article.
Facebook's platform is where a lot of fake news lives and is shared. The all caps "WHAT?!" is my first attempt at grabbing readers' attention, perhaps seeming like click-bait or fake news itself. The bolded red letters on the image "FAKE NEWS... DEMOCRACY" should also gain attention. Once I've gotten people to stop scrolling and read the second line, they get a surprising statistic directly from my article, "Fake news is 70% more likely to be shared compared to real news!". This will make the reader surprised and I *hope* they will want to find out if they have fallen victim to fake news and read more!
LinkedIn's platform is very professional. Since this platform is more about academia and career connections, I wanted to include the word "research" in the caption. The users on this platform will *hopefully* be more informed about fake news generally, so I wanted to entice them by asking how "misinformation is impacting our political conversations". This calm approach is more of a call-to-action to the reader, rather than a click-baity headline.
By showing how I posted the same blog on three different platforms, I hope this brief blog helps you navigate how to post your content appropriately. On Twitter, my caption was a one-liner directing viewers to the blog. On Facebook, the caption was very click-baity and urged the readers to click with a surprising statistic. Lastly on LinkedIn, I tried to match the audience with my "research" headline and questioning our political conversations. The biggest thing to remember is your content must feel relevant and native to the platform is lives on for the best results. Best of luck!