Three ways in which Facebook can improve your copywriting

Facebook is grammar’s Gomorrah. Everything that could go wrong for the written word goes wrong there.

But it has made me a better writer, and it can easily do the same for you.

HOW?

It’s a brutal practice ground. As a copywriter, a comfortable word count for me is an essay for most others. Clever wordplays go unnoticed. Dry witticisms are quickly outdone by people who (gulp) don’t write for a living.

But it does shine a cheap, bright light on effective communication, too. And here are a few of the tricks I’ve learnt.

WHY?

Because marketing comms are increasingly short, off-the-cuff and “real-time”. Correct written structure is a nice-to-have, but often well down the list of priorities. Personality is much more important than perfection, and a tweet can be as powerful as a white paper. So, increasingly, the language you use on Facebook is the same language you use in business.

WHAT ARE THE TRICKS?

1. Rough is enough
2. Your job is to keep the thread running
3. How to get away with being rude
Let me explain:

1. Scratch your snobbishness: rough IS ready, cheap IS cheerful

Get too poetic and you just look pretentious. Pause to hone your grammar and you miss your place in the comment queue, and your clever comeback misses its timing. Facebook teaches you to just put your idea down in the words that spring to mind and hit “post”. To quote from go-to business guru Seth Godin: “Go ship.” If it’s about right, it’s good enough.

There are two key reasons to learn this lesson. First: often “perfect” writing doesn’t look as “from the heart”. It takes on a calculated edge. Imperfect can, sometimes, be more emotive. Or just funnier.

Second: it keeps your comment to-the-point. If you’re creative enough to write something clever in the first place, then you’re bound to have further ideas if you pause to polish; sometimes the idea – as well as the spontaneity – can be lost. Often you’ve just got to write from the hip.

2. Your job is to create a set-up for the next person

Which is tricky, because there’s a mental shift involved: it’s no longer about you, and your aim is NOT to have the last word. Don’t be the comment killer.

This is of massive importance in commercial writing – perhaps never more so. Writing a tagline, an ad strapline or a call to action is about motivating your reader to actively pursue greater involvement: whether that’s to picture themselves using a particular product or to CALL NOW! When you dive into a Facebook comment thread, you should remember it’s that: a thread. Not an end, or a knot. The most “successful” Facebookers I know – the ones whose statuses always attract comment – are the ones who, deliberately or not, create opportunities for others to pitch in, to jest, to banter, to agree. To act.

Glance at your friends’ profiles to see what provokes comment – and why.

3. Notice – and develop – your written voices

I have very different roles when interacting with different friends on Facebook, but each one has become clear and distinctive.

With one friend, it’s accepted that I’ll pick up on even the tiniest flaw in his grammar, even if it appears inappropriate to the tone of the post: “Bob and me just lost our jobs”; “Bob and I…” It’s become the joke, and the fact that I make the effort to wind him up is a form of affection in itself. My Facebook relationships with other friends are very different.

Why is this a lesson? Because it’s very tricky to correctly understand tone and intent through the written word. Defining a voice allows an agreed ruleset to emerge. I can be rude to the mate above in seemingly inappropriate situations and he knows it’s actually a sympathetic acknowledgement.

When writing commercially, this practice comes into its own. It becomes second nature to slip into an appropriate tone for the piece you’re writing. It helps you to define a brand voice for your company. It enables a more accurate and significant communication of your subtler brand personality traits and beliefs, leading to a deeper rapport with your regular audience. Plus, it’s just great practice at flipping between different writing styles.

THE TAKE-AWAYS:

These three points are worth raising because copywriting is important for making a brand feel human and approachable, but people writing for brands often forget everything they would do if writing for themselves. You know how to do the right things already. So just being conscious of what’s happening when you (and other people) write on Facebook should give you more confidence to attack your business writing with more awareness and guile.

Any tips you’d like to add? Post them below for others to see…

By DMA blogger Laurence Collings, freelance copywriter