Twitter Assignement.

My Twitter experience

As everybody I created a twitter account several months ago. I have to confess that at the beginning I was quite septic and suspicious about the concept.

Indeed at first I thought Twitter was for the ‘no life’, I was sure to find people talking or should I say twitting about their uninterested life and read twits saying for instance

· I ate an apple today

· I hate my in-laws

· I am sick what should I do?

You do see what I mean, don’t you?

A week ago my writing for interactive media teacher gave us a very unusual assignment, which was to get on twitter and twit for a week and then write about this experience. So I decided to get more curious about this trend and got myself out there!

I am keen of the advertising world and wish to work one day in this field so I decided to follow people twitting about this subject. I followed more than 50 persons including newspaper, ad agency, bloggers and random people.

I had so many questions in my head, what would I write about? What were the unwritten rules and codes? How would I get people interested in what I write? I was totally scared and unconfident about myself.

I started to read the feeds, to dig out cool information, got interested in several discussions. And finally got the courage to twit about my favorite subject, posted links to video or advertising article that I think was relevant.

The truth is, there is way less ‘no life’ then I though it would be. I got very excited about all the news and all the interesting things I got to read about.

Today I have 40 followers, which I think is not bad for a beginner.

To conclude I must say that ‘My twitter experience’ is quite a success. I met interesting people who share the same interest and passion. I learned a lot and think that Twitter is more then a social network but it’s also a great communication tools and source of news.

I think I could get addicted!

Headline rewritting assignment

While scanning the front page of my newspaper (The Charlotte observer) I found this headline, which I thought, would perfectly work as an online headline: ‘Idol’ intrigue is mostly offstage.

This headline is quite specific and eye catcher. It takes a few seconds to understand the subject of the article, which is obviously the American Idol Show. This headline could be easily searched on the web.

Whereas reading with more attention the paper, I found this following headline: ‘Fat mass may build bone mass in girl’ which seemed to be unfitted for an online publication.

Indeed the matter is quite important and serious, but to me this headline is not enough punchy and dynamic to catch a user eye.

The article talks about the fact that puberty is a crucial time for a girl to have some padding. It’s quite a revelation in today’s societies in which young girls are always under hard pressure about their Image.

I think this article headline should be rewritten for an online publication.

For instance:

- Big is Beautiful!

- Fat mass is good for you

From Print to Internet asssigment

Web versus Print

Reading from screens is 25% slower than from paper and we know that Web users skim rather than read. It come with no surprised that if you want to write for the web, there are few very important key points to keep in mind in order to have your reader attention.

Forget MLA or APS and welcome in the Interactive World!

The Internet is both a medium and a delivery system. It’s true that as a delivery system, the Internet can provide information in whatever form you want, but still some study has been made on the best way to get your information on the web. There are simple rules to follow to get your storytelling reshape for the Web, it breaks down in four broad area:

Searchability

Obviously you want your article, your paper, or your post to be read. In order to be read it needs to be found by your target right ?

The need for searchability affects the headline because they tend to be used as links. When writing your headlines follow the conventional subject-verb-object structure.

Scanability

Because it is so painful to read text on computer screens and because the online experience seems to foster some amount of impatience, users tend not to read streams of text fully. Instead, users scan text and pick out keywords, sentences, and paragraphs of interest while skipping over those parts of the text they care less about.

Check list:

è Write tight and bright

è Use inverted pyramids

è Get to the point, be short and effective

è Use lists, but not to many

è Use subheads and boldface words

Linkability

Solicit both of your audience hemispheres emotions and rationality have to be stimulate.

Picture, video, audio are also contents. Links are the currency of the online world. So don’t be afraid to send people away to illustrate your subject. It will ad credibility to your article.

The key to effective linking is to find the most relevant information possible and take your users directly to it.

Sociabilty

Today web life is all about sharing, it should be standard for every on line article to have an ‘e-mail this’ link to make the user forward it to friends or co-workers

Read more about writting for the Web