Highlights of my presentation to members of the broadcasting community at the Chicago chapter of SAG-AFTRA.

1. Staying
sane and
productive
on social
media
Charlie Meyerson
linkedin.com/in/cmeyerson
facebook.com/meyerson
@Meyerson on Twitter
Charlie@MeyersonStrategy.com

2. As a minimum, get on Facebook and Twitter.
@Meyerson

3. Connect Facebook to Twitter,
or Twitter to Facebook
Two birds with one stone. Or one bird and one F with one stone, anyway.
(Note: You need to write something
on Facebook for this to work.
Otherwise, you just get a Twitter
link without context.)

4. But turn off alerts,
email advisories, etc.
Check when you want to, not when summoned.
@Meyerson

5. Turn off your
phone’s buzzing
and other
intrusive
notifications for
all but the most
important
communication.
@Meyerson

6. Connect with (smart) friends relentlessly.
@Meyerson

7. Follow smart
people.
Twitter and Facebook can
help, especially after
you’ve entered a few
names.
@Meyerson

8. @Meyerson
Follow smart people.

9. Follow smart people.
@Meyerson

10. Share
interesting stuff
from your
phone.
@Meyerson

11. Not sure
what to say?
Copy the
most
interesting
passage
from the
content
you’re
sharing.*
@Meyerson
*But don’t forget the
quotation marks.

12. But know the difference between posting
to the public and posting to just friends.
(Note: If you’ve linked Facebook and Twitter, only
your public Facebook posts will share to Twitter.)@Meyerson

13. @Meyerson
This is just the start. Social media
companies have created whole free
courses for people in the media.

14. @Meyerson
And, in fact, this Thursday …
FacebookJournalismProjectNewsDayChicago.SplashThat.com

15. Or just Google.
@Meyerson

16. Writing
counts.
@Meyerson

17. Style
counts.
@Meyerson

18. Bonus:
You can
also create
a
newsletter
using
Nuzzel.
@Meyerson

19. A few words
on headlines
@Meyerson

20. Headlines are more than things in newspapers.
@Meyerson

21. Headlines are how we connect in social media.
*
*No longer true.
@Meyerson

22. Headlines are how we decide what to watch on
YouTube.
@Meyerson

23. Headlines determine
whether anyone
listens to your audio
or
views your video
on the web.
@Meyerson

24. The key?
Good, old-
fashioned
writing.
@Meyerson

25. Keys to getting people not to tune out:
• Omit needless words.
—Will Strunk, The Elements of Style, 1918.
• Twitter.
• Texting.
• Tiny smartphone screens that truncate subject lines.
Need we say more?
@Meyerson

26. Would you do this?
@Meyerson

27. Many companies
do that.
@Meyerson

28. Common mistakes
Echoing From field in Subject
@Meyerson

29. Common mistakes
Repeating Subject from day to day
@Meyerson

30. Common mistakes
No
interesting words first
in Subject
@Meyerson

31. Compare those dispatches
in the last few slides to these.
Would you click or delete?
Strunk and White: “Use definite,
specific, concrete language.”
@Meyerson

32. Note how few words you get.
If the future is
mobile, now more
than ever, every
word–every
syllable–counts.
Strunk & White:
Omit needless
words.
@Meyerson

33. This isn’t about
Clickbait
@Meyerson

34. This is about
Good headlines
and
Bad headlines
@Meyerson

35. Good headlines
Connect content
to the maximum number of people
to whom it’s
useful and relevant.
They begin with the most interesting words.
They’re brief; they omit needless words.
They create a curiosity gap.
@Meyerson

36. Bad headlines
Fail to connect content
with people who’d find it
useful and relevant.
They’re long, boring and irrelevant.
They don’t spotlight interesting words.
They generate little curiosity.
Or
Connect content
with people to whom it’s
neither useful nor relevant
(turning them off to future communication).
@Meyerson

37. meyersonstrategy.com/2007/04/good-radio-writing.html
@Meyerson
Keys to getting people not to tune out:
Place the story’s most
relevant word or phrase as
close as possible to the start
of the headline—and let
your writing flow from
there.

38. Headlines that work
Two flavors:
• Search-engine-optimized (SEO) headlines
(headlines for robots*).
Good for page-level placement.
• “Curiosity gap”-optimized headlines
(headlines for people*).
Good for front-page and email placement, for
print publications ... and for social media
(Twitter, Facebook).
*Andy Crestodina: orbitmedia.com/blog/write-for-robots-write-for-people/
@Meyerson

39. SEO-friendly headlines
These are the stupid-simple headlines that tell the
story plainly—that look like the answer to a
Google query:
Plainfield resident Robert Smith named
Acme Corp. employee of 2017
(Answers queries like “Acme Corp’s 2017 employee of year” or “Robert Smith of
Plainfield.)
@Meyerson

40. ‘Curiosity gap’
The difference between what you know
and what you want to know
Like The Onion, the editorial team at Upworthy begins with
dozens of headlines and works on them until they create
what Mr. [Eli] Pariser called “a curiosity gap”—a need to
know more that prompts the impulse to click on something.
—David Carr, The New York Times
mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/two-guys-made-a-web-site-and-this-is-what-they-got/
@Meyerson

41. ‘Curiosity gap’ headlines
Assume most people (think they) aren’t interested.
• Write headlines to engage them, and your core audience
will still be there for you.
• Play down location.
(Except locations well-known to your audience.)
• Play down names.
(Except names well-known to your audience.)
(Use generic nouns for unfamiliar names.)
@Meyerson

42. ‘Curiosity gap’ headlines
• Questions:
Who was Deep Throat?
• Ellipses, teases:
Nation’s fattest city is …
• Pull-quotes:
‘Suck it up, wussies’
• BuzzFeed style:
You won’t believe ...
(But be certain to deliver something we won’t believe.)
@Meyerson

43. The power of YOU
• Works with SEO-friendly headlines.
• Works with “curiosity gap” headlines.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/secondperson-
narrative-enthralling-you,30380/
@Meyerson

44. In all kinds of headlines, avoid …
ACRONYMS.
Image: business2community.com/marketing/42-b2b-marketing-acronyms-and-abbreviations-0192246
@Meyerson
The crack cocaine of
headline writing.
Avoid them.
Unless your readers say
otherwise.
(And they probably
won’t.)

45. The case for sentence case
... vs. Title Case for headlines:
• Concrete nouns drive traffic.
• The most concrete concrete nouns are Proper Nouns.
• So why not make Proper Nouns easier to find?
@Meyerson

46. Find proper nouns:
Just
proper
nouns
capitalized
@Meyerson

47. The bottom line:
Don’t be boring.
@Meyerson

48. And feel
free to
critique
how I do it!
Charlie Meyerson
linkedin.com/in/cmeyerson
facebook.com/ChiPubSq
@ChiPublicSquare on Twitter
C@ChicagoPublicSquare by email
@ChiPublicSquare

49. Staying
sane and
productive
on social
media
Charlie Meyerson
linkedin.com/in/cmeyerson
facebook.com/ChiPubSq
@ChiPublicSquare on Twitter
C@ChicagoPublicSquare by email
@ChiPublicSquare