6 Tips for Writing Well on Social Media

There are 1 million links shared, 2 million friends requested, and 3 million messages sent on Facebook every 20 minutes. Twitter users send 9,100 tweets every second. More than 60 percent of all Americans have at least one social media profile — and many use this profile daily. Whether you love it or hate it, communication on social media is a fact of life.

Unfortunately, the nuances of communicating on social media escape many people. This can be frustrating for those who cherish the written word. However, it’s definitely possible to write well and find your voice on any platform. Here are six tips to improve your social posts.

Use Your Casual Voice

Social media is made for the casual voice, even for users on professional networks. The focus is on the social aspect of communication. It’s about starting a conversation and engaging with others in your network. Ask questions, offer insight, and avoid the colorless “business-speak” that clutters so much business and professional writing. Your social voice should feel like talking with a friend — a grammatically correct friend.

Keep It Short and Simple

Social media isn’t the place for deep musings, long rants, or well-reasoned arguments. If you have a long piece you want to share with your readers, link to it, and keep your commentary short. While Facebook allows around 400 characters plus a link, it’s best to stick to around 200 characters, or 40 words or fewer. Of course, Twitter’s 140-character limit makes pithy writing not only a virtue, but a necessity.

Use Action-Oriented Language

The point of using social media in business or at work is to get your followers to do something, whether it’s read an article, watch a video, join a conversation, or attend an event. A good formula for a social media post starts with a thought-provoking question and an invitation for your followers to take action. Try this: “Ever wonder what really goes on in the White House kitchen? I loved this great interview with Exec Chef Cristeta Comerford. Tell me what surprised you the most.”

Use Pronouns

Writing on social media should feel intimate for your followers, even if you have thousands of them. Use “I,” “me,” and “you” in your updates and posts. Social media is a conversation between colleagues or friends, not a lecture from on high. Write as if you’re talking to one person, not a mass audience.

Play with Punctuation and Capitalization

Don’t be afraid to break a few rules to convey emphasis or emotion on social media. While writing in all caps is generally frowned upon in business writing, it’s perfectly okay to emphasize a word or two with capital letters. Using an exclamation point or two is also acceptable to show excitement or emotion. With the space limits on social media platforms, these devices help convey emotion and tone.

Don’t Forget to Edit

You might be tempted to operate in draft mode on social media, but that carries real risk. Writing in a conversational tone to a large audience leaves plenty of room for misinterpretation, especially when your word count is restricted. There’s a good case to be made that social media posts need more editing than formal writing, not less, especially if you’re posting for an employer. At the very least, have a co-worker or friend read your post before publishing to make sure your meaning is clear.

Social media is a powerful tool for networking and engaging with customers, colleagues, friends, and influencers in your areas of interest or expertise. Keep it casual and concise — and be sure to edit for clarity.

Which social media platforms do you use most? Have you ever published a post you wish you hadn’t?

Have You Become More or Less Careful with Your Writing Over Time?

The Essential Résumé Template

There are two things you need to keep in mind when you’re creating a résumé. First, you should be aware that a lot of recruiters and employers use special software that searches your résumé for specific keywords. Even when your résumé does get seen by human eyes—and this is the second thing you need to remember—the employer will take only six seconds to make a decision about how good of a fit you might be for the job.

To make sure your résumé gives you at least a fighting chance of finding employment, it would be a good idea to develop a résumé template. And that’s where we can help, by giving you the information you need to write each section and arrange them according to your strengths.

The Makings of a Résumé

The average résumé contains the following sections: contact information, résumé introduction, education, professional experience, skills. You can also add a section with special honors, activities, and even hobbies, but we will focus on the five sections that are usually seen in a résumé.

Depending on the arrangement of the sections, résumés are divided into three types: the chronological, the functional, and the combination format. In all three of them, the contact information goes at the top of the résumé and is followed by the résumé introduction.

If you choose the most commonly used format, the chronological one, you will follow the contact info and introduction sections with professional experience, education, and skills. Students might want to place education before professional experience if they don’t have a lot of professional experience.

In the functional and the combination format, the emphasis is on the skills section, which should follow the contact information section and the résumé introduction. The professional experience and education are placed after the skills section, with a slight difference in how you list the items in the section.

These are the choices you have regarding the format, but do you know which one you should choose? Put your strongest section closer to the top of the résumé. If you’re applying for a job for which you have plenty of relevant experience, it makes sense to choose the chronological format. If, on the other hand, you’re changing industries or have a chaotic professional history, one of the two other formats might suit you better. When you choose the format, you can start making the résumé from the top down.

Contact Information

Your contact information should include your name, address, phone number, and email address, plus a link to a portfolio or website and possibly even a link to your LinkedIn profile.

You should place your name, in bold and a slightly larger font than the rest of the résumé, on the very top. Below it, you should write your address, or at least the city and the state you live in, and then list your phone number and email address, maybe even on the same line. Your personal website and social media profiles should only be included in the contact information if they can serve as your portfolio. Social media managers, for example, can include a link to their Facebook pages, and web designers can include links to their personal websites if they designed them.

The one thing you should be aware of is that contact information, even though it should be on the top of the résumé, should not be placed in a header, as some of the software used to scan résumés cannot read headers.

Résumé Introduction

The introduction is where you would put your professional summary, a branded statement, or the objective statement.

Objective statements used to be the only way to go for a résumé introduction—a brief statement of what you want to achieve with your résumé with a reference to why you think you should achieve it. Objective statements are a mix of your goals and your experience, although some sources advise you to remove the part about your goals and instead present a summary of your professional experience (or a statement about who you are and what you’re about if you don’t have a lot experience).

Professional Experience

In the professional experience section, list the relevant jobs you previously held. They should follow a simple template: for each job, write the name of the company, its location, your job title, and the dates of your employment. If you want to make the gaps in your employment look smaller than they really are, you can write only the years of your employment; otherwise, it’s usual to use the month and the year.

Each job you held should be followed by a few bullet points which list your achievements and duties. It would also be a good idea to include a quantifiable data points. For example, if you were responsible for hiring new staff at a job you had, include the number of staff members you hired. Also, don’t use the formulation “responsible for hiring new staff.” Use active verbs instead, and say “hired twelve new staff members.”

Education

Unless you’re fresh out of college and don’t have a lot of skills or professional experience, your education section should be pretty straight-forward—the name of your college, your degree, and the year you graduated. If you didn’t go to college but have skills and experience, you could list the name of your high school, its location, the year you graduated, and your GPA (if above 3.0).

If you don’t have any work experience, you might want to expand your education section and include academic achievements, relevant coursework, and activities. Of course, you should list these things using bullet points.

Skills

If you’ve chosen to create a résumé in the chronological format, your skills section should be the place where you write a couple of skills you haven’t been able to fit in anywhere else in the résumé.

However, if you’re writing a functional or a combination résumé, your skills section is the most important part. Choose between three and five skills that are most relevant to the job you’re applying for and list them in the section. For each of the skills, create a bullet-point list of at least three items that support the skill. Remember to use active verbs and quantifiable points when possible. When you finish, your skills section should look similar to how professional experience sections look in chronological résumés.

How to Emoji at Work: A Guide

Elon Musk is a visionary in many areas, but his memo on acronyms at SpaceX will be forever remembered as one of the greatest workplace satires of all time. The memo, aptly titled “Acronyms Seriously Suck,” explained that “excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication.” Musk then goes on for four paragraphs on why acronyms are ruining the culture at SpaceX.

Some thinkers would have us believe that emojis, like emoticons before them, are similarly ruining office communication. Many professionals point to the ambiguity and potential offensiveness of emojis as reasons to avoid them, and they’re not wrong. Emojis can easily be misinterpreted, and while their novelty makes them exciting, it can also detract from the message you’re trying to communicate to a colleague or client.

Of course, this means that using emojis at work is not mandatory, since they are still unacceptable in many contexts. However, emojis can provide helpful subtext or levity to a situation, allowing the recipient of a chat or email to know how it should be interpreted. If you are going to venture into the world of emoji-laden workplace communication, keep these things in mind.

Check Culture Fit

At this point, most workplaces accept emojis in informal modes of communication, like Slack or Google Hangouts. However, if you work in a formal or more conservative industry, it’s a good idea to wait for someone else to send the first emoji. If you have Slack, you can always look at the chat history and see if emojis are a common addition to your public channels.

If you are chatting or emailing, it’s best to wait for someone senior to you to send an emoji before you try out your latest string of sunflowers and laughing-while-crying emojis. Also, it should be noted that while emojis are often acceptable in interoffice communication, you should be careful before inserting them into emails or correspondence with clients, partners, or customers.

Double-Check Your Emoji Meanings

We’ve given this piece of advice before, but for good reason. Studies show that emojis can have different meanings depending on the country you’re in, the device you use, or even the conversation prior to the emoji. There are some commonly-confused emojis you can avoid, but regardless of the emoji you’re using, make sure your recipient will understand the emotion and intent it represents before you send.

Use Smileys to Soften Bad News

It has been shown that one of the most common use-cases for emojis at work is to show that a message is positive. To paraphrase The Atlantic, the problem with work chat is often that electronic messages are devoid of inflection. In longform writing like emails, you have the space to compensate for this lack of subtext by using extra positive words or phrases. But when you’re sending a quick Gchat to a colleague, you don’t have space to fully compensate for the aloof nature of shorthand text conversation. That’s when a positive, smiling emoji will go a long way in building positive interactions and connections with your colleagues.

Make Sure Everyone Is in on the Joke

Another helpful way to use emojis at work is to indicate that you’re joking. Below are some of the most common emojis that indicate sarcasm, but you can use a variety of emojis to show you’re just kidding. Remember, though, that this usage is probably best reserved for colleagues you know well, not your manager at a brand-new gig. Do you use emojis at work? Tell us more about your experience in the comments below.

How Game of Thrones Characters Would Approach a Writing Assignment

Though A Song of Ice and Fire was not written to be a writing guide, there are many valuable lessons in the epic that can be broadly applied to different facets of life.

Spoiler alert

In this post, we will be analyzing characters and their development throughout book five of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and season seven of HBO’s Game of Thrones to understand what lessons certain characters can offer to improve your writing.

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Tyrion Lannister

Don’t shy away from your unique (writing) style.

A mind needs books… #BookLoversDay pic.twitter.com/rpkovEoUvU

— Tyrion Lannister (@GoT_Tyrion) August 9, 2017

Tyrion is the youngest of the three Lannister siblings and an outcast. Yet, he has wisely chosen to own his small stature and “monstrous” appearance, which gives him a unique perspective of the world. He even advises such to Jon Snow:

Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.

Tyrion shines with self-confidence. From his witty one-liners to passing off his own wisdom as “ancient and timeless,” he embodies the truth that his voice matters. Striving for the same authenticity to yourself, your writing will shine.

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Samwell Tarly

Use the resources around you, freely share your insights, and try some poetry.

“No one touches Sam.”@JohnBradleyWest holds #SamwellTarly at #SDCC2017. #GoTSDCC pic.twitter.com/aGDNcJVjj4

— Game Of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) July 21, 2017

Samwell Tarly is a noble whose strengths as a bookish scholar didn’t live up to the expectations of his house, which forced him into the brotherhood of the Night’s Watch. As an assistant to Maester Aemon of the Night’s Watch, Samwell’s true strengths—his loyalty, resourcefulness, and insight—come to the fore. These traits continually serve him and those around him as he travels to the Citadel at Oldtown, where he uncovers a source of Dragonglass (which kills Whitewalkers), cures Jorah Mormont of Grayscale, and offers some editorial advice to Archmaester Ebrose about the title of his book—“Possibly something a bit more … poetic.”

George R.R. Martin himself has even identified with Samwell Tarly, which has led some to speculate that Samwell Tarly is actually the narrator/writer of A Song of Ice and Fire. Learn from him and you’ll be in fine (writing) company.

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Jon Snow

Rely on your support network to create better (writing) solutions.

The reunion we are all waiting for �� #GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/gLu70dEB8K

— King Jon Snow (@LordSnow) August 7, 2017

Jon Snow begins his journey as an underappreciated bastard of House Stark and hesitatingly rises to lead the Night’s Watch. Eventually, he is elected Lord of Winterfell. Jon Snow, guided by a sense of duty and loyalty to his team rather than by ambition, seeks counsel and consensus almost to a fault. This tendency to rely on his support network and the wisdom of his council helps him to lead well, however. This is exemplified in both his election as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch and Lord of Winterfell, when supporters speak on his behalf.

Improve your writing the same way by regularly seeking feedback from respected peers.

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Daenerys Targaryen

Trust your intuition and be bold!

Mother of Dragons ��#GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/bBb0cYLxpJ

— Daenerys Targaryen (@Daenerys_GOT) August 11, 2017

Daenerys Targaryen, Khaleesi, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons. . . whatever you call her, you cannot deny her accomplishments. As an orphan exiled from her homeland, she has overcome many hardships to assert her claim to the Iron Throne of Westeros, including ending the slave trade and bringing dragons back from extinction.

One of her guiding characteristics throughout all this achievement is the faith she has in herself and her intuition. Quite often she trusts her intuition of what is right in spite of contrary advice, and her instinct doesn’t fail her.

Are you looking to improve your writing? Trust your instincts.

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Lyanna Mormont

Be direct. Use short sentences.

If Lyanna Mormont isn't your new hero on Game of Thrones, you're lying: Meet Bella Ramsey. https://t.co/IhsRWkpEuR pic.twitter.com/wNL7NVnoPC

— E! News (@enews) July 1, 2016

This young Lady of Bear Island was orphaned at age ten after the Red Wedding and became one of the youngest leaders in Westeros. Though her participation has only picked up recently in the series, her style is iconic—demonstrated as early as Season 5, when she is asked to bend the knee to Stannis Baratheon:

“Bear Island knows no king but the King in the North, whose name is Stark.”

Lyanna is a master of brevity. Her bold, confident directness silences those around her and lends her a tenacity all her own.

Bolster your own writing by using the same technique: keep it simple.

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Davos Seaworth

Don’t be afraid to learn something new.

#GameOfThrones Davos Seaworth needs a job https://t.co/eHomtJLgkD pic.twitter.com/dXDeZXk4eC

— USA TODAY Life (@usatodaylife) April 28, 2016

Davos Seaworth, or the Onion Knight, is a reformed smuggler whose loyalties lie with whomever he sees as the greatest hope for the people. In his journey to support those leaders, he hasn’t shied away from the learning he has had to pursue. He unashamedly takes reading lessons from a child. He willingly admits his wrongs and his lack of familiarity with traditions. He embraces the need to continually learn rather than seeing it as a failing or weakness.

Becoming a great writer is a learning process. Humble yourself to that and see where it will take you.

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Margaery Tyrell

Know your audience.

#TheWarsToCome ��♠️ pic.twitter.com/8gCMKZzfmC

— Margaery Tyrell (@MargaeryTyrelI) April 13, 2015

Margaery Tyrell, wife of Joffrey and later Tommen Baratheon, was raised to master court politics at Highgarden. While in King’s Landing, she excels, garnering the love of the people as well as her husbands. The personalization she shows to the people she is with wins her power quickly. She caters to her audience so well that Queen Regent Cersei Lannister begins to doubt her own influence over her son, King Tommen, and orchestrates Margaery’s demise.

Learn about your audience and give what you can to them in your writing.

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Melisandre, The Red Woman

Don’t overestimate your own opinion.

"She had no time for sleep, with the weight of the world upon her shoulders" – Melisandre, A Dance With Dragons#PrepareForWinter #ImSoTired pic.twitter.com/GXTa9Zk9Th

— Melisandre of Asshai (@TheRedWoman) June 26, 2017

Where self-confidence and instinct can improve the authenticity and effectiveness of your writing, Melisandre, a Red Priestess of the Lord of Light, shows how over-confidence can lead you astray. Born an orphan and trained as a priestess, Melisandre is so convinced of her powers of prophecy that she leads Stannis Baratheon to wage a war he catastrophically loses after sacrificing his own daughter in a vain effort to gain favor with the Red God.

This experience teaches Melisandre that her interpretations of the prophecy are not, in fact, perfect and that much can be lost from valuing your skills and opinion too highly.

The writing tip here? Learn to balance your instinct and self-confidence with gut-checks now and then to be sure you’re on the right track.

5 Simple Ways to Write about Negative Issues with a Positive Spin

Have you ever written something only to have the recipient completely misunderstand your intent? Or been accused of abruptness when you thought you were being businesslike and efficient? There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to communicating effectively, but among the most important is tone.

I’ve spent nearly two decades in the online trenches in roles ranging from business owner to forum moderator to PR email writer extraordinaire—a true virtual diplomat. Here’s my best advice for writing about negative issues in a way that sounds positive and productive.

1Present solutions instead of problems.

It’s better to talk about what you can do rather than what you can’t. Formulate a solution or alternate plan and present that instead.

I can’t meet with you tomorrow morning because I’m booked.

Tomorrow afternoon works better for me. Would a 2 p.m. meeting fit your schedule?

Not everyone will remember to bring their handbooks to the meeting, so we should bring extras.

Let’s remember to bring extra handbooks to the meeting in case anyone needs a copy.

2State what you want, not what you don’t.

Why focus on preventing a negative outcome when you can encourage a positive one? Instead of beginning requests with “don’t,” try stating what you do want.

Don’t leave your leftovers in the break room fridge over the weekend.

Remember to take your leftovers out of the break room fridge on Fridays.

Do not bring laptops to this meeting.

Laptops aren’t necessary at this meeting, so leave yours at your desk.

3Keep hyperbole in check.

Sometimes exaggerated language is used to great effect (particularly by advertisers) to promote something or speak to positive issues, but when you use it in a negative context it can evoke bad feelings. Watch out for words like always and never. They’re more likely to mean sometimes than either of those extremes.

You always file your reports late.

I sometimes receive your reports after the deadline.

We never get anything done.

Let’s stay on task so we can get things done.

4Try “I statements.”

When you’re tackling a difficult issue, statements that begin with “you” (and especially “you always” and “you never”—see the previous tip about hyperbole) tend to sound like accusations. And accusations, of course, raise a person’s defenses.

When you’re bringing up something negative, keep the focus on how the situation makes you feel rather than what the other person did.

You never listen!

I find it hard to communicate when I’m worried that I’m not being heard.

You’re always on my case!

I feel frustrated when I’m frequently reminded to do my work instead of being trusted to meet my responsibilities.

5“I’m sorry, but . . .” means you’re not sorry.

When I was a kid, and I’d apologize for some heinous act of childhood treachery, I’d often apologize with, “I’m sorry, but—” My mom would cut me off in my tracks, saying, “Any time you add a ‘but’ it means you’re not sorry, you’re just defending yourself.”

When you’re sorry, be sorry. Excuses and other defenses render apologies useless.

We’re sorry your shipment was delayed, but we had a lot of orders this week.

We’re sorry your shipment was delayed. The number of orders we received this week took us by surprise!

I’m sorry I interrupted you, but I felt the conversation was headed in the wrong direction.

I’m sorry I interrupted you. Let’s keep the conversation on a positive track.

Here are a couple of things to consider before you send an email, write a social media post, or address anything negative in writing.

• Do an empathy check. Read what you’ve written as though you’re the recipient. How would you feel if someone sent this to you? Is there anything you can change to make the message more positive, or to focus on solutions instead of problems?
• Sit on it. Have you ever fired off a scathing missive and almost immediately regretted it? Give texts about negative issues a cooling off period before you send or post them. Chances are, you’ll be able to rewrite with a more positive mindset once you’ve had some time to process.

It’s not always appropriate to be upbeat and enthusiastic. A realtor, for example, wouldn’t want to sound chipper when she’s writing to tell a client that the value of their home has dropped significantly due to a downturn in the market. But maintaining a positive, solution-focused tone can make things like bad news or criticism less devastating.

This Emoji Guide Is Fire

Emojis may be the cutting edge of language, but do any of us really know how to use them? For example, let’s say your friend sent you a text that read, “???☺️.” Would you know that it meant “the key to success is a great attitude”? Unless you and your friend have already established emoji conventions of your own, probably not. Emojis, while an interesting communicative device, don’t yet have a formal system of grammar governing their use. In fact, SwiftKey, one of the apps that helps people send more emojis, has shown that emoji combinations are overwhelmingly repetitions of a single emoji for effect. This supports the stance that emojis are not a new language, but a system that allows speakers of a certain language to express emotions and opinions in a new way.

Although the emoji system of communication will most likely evolve, we’ve collected a few best practices to help you use emojis more efficiently. Check them out and leave your thoughts on the future of emojis in the comments below.

A Guide to Emoji Grammar from Grammarly