Every week, I review the top blog articles that I have read through and call the post “Links of the Week.” In this process of going through countless articles, finding the best ones, and putting a link on the post with a summary of the article, I have found it VERY tough to come up with a single sentence for the post. The simple solution for it is that I would love a simple, tweetable sentence that summarizes the whole thing for me.
Marketers do this really well in radio and television ads. A single, simple statement to sell the product that they say over and over again. Anyone remember “HEADON! Apply directly to the forehead?”
Perfect!
Communication teachers would tell pastors to do the same thing. Sum up the whole sermon into a single sentence and then say it at the beginning, middle, and end.
This may seem very selfish of me, but what if you did that?
120 character sentence that starts off every article (leaving enough space for a link to the post) that gives the view enough details to know if they should continue reading it. How would this play out?
Here are three benefits of having a tweetable summary introduction.
- More People Tweeting That Exact Phrase
More marketing and better traffic flow. In marketing, this sentence would be apart of a boilerplate where the tweets already written for you, people just have to grab it and share it. - It Refines Your Writing Process
Having to put the whole article into a single sentence is going to streamline your thought process and make the goal much more clear and precise, whether you intend for it to happen or not. Who wants to spend 15 minutes writing a summary sentence, when you can write the sentence first and then spend time on the whole article. - You’d Be Quoted More
If you can have a single quote lined up, you may end up getting quoted more often within their blog articles. This is the best outcome because articles have a longer shelf life than a status update or tweet on a social network account.
Be creative with it. Create a specific CSS design for it so that it offsets in the post and looks sweet in the website. You have so much potential.
What concerns could you have with this?
Samuel Sutter says
ummm… someone had to point it out… if it’s such a good idea… why didn’t you do it…
(unless “Every week, I review the top blog articles that I have read through and call the post “Links of the Week.” is what you’re shooting for?) lol
Samuel Sutter says
or, maybe it works – (last sentence in intro paragraph?) I just think it should have a more clear tweetable referent. (vs “whole thing”) idk.
Jeremy Smith says
I am slowly working to integrate it. It’s one of those things that I found out by frustration, only to notice I had to have it in mine too. Experience is a great teacher!