I haven't messaged you in a few days.
Because we had a friend here from England visiting so we were busy having fun and relaxing. That and more important things took over. You know, life :)
But the last time I did message you I was harping on about how great short text posts are and how much fun I'm having writing them lately.
And while that is true...
I was lying to you all week.
There's actually a sad truth behind short text posts that I haven't exposed to you because I've been spending my time, and your time, convincing you that they are the best thing since slice bread.
But even sliced bread has it's drawbacks.
What if one day you want your bread sliced thicker? Or thinner?
You can't because the whole loaf is already sliced in one size.
That's just one drawback of sliced bread and I'm sure if you gave me a few more hours I could list a lot more. But I'm not here to lecture you about sliced bread (I'm not here to lecture you at all, obviously).
I am here to today to tell you just one truthful draw back of short, text posts.
It's a bit of a complex one, but I'll explain this with a simple A vs B scenario.
Here goes...
Scenario A:
Imagine you grab a coffee.
As you're queuing up the person in front of you turns around and says "Good morning" with a smile.
You say "Morning" back, again, with a smile because you're happy to have some human interaction in a world of disengaged zombies.
You ask "how are you?".
They say "I'm good, thank you.".
But that's it, convo over. They ordered their coffee and left.
That person is still a complete stranger to you and you know nothing about them and you never got past a surface level interaction.
Scenario B:
Everything in scenario A happens exactly the same, but in scenario B they followed up their "I'm good, thank you." with a "How are you?".
You reply, tell them how you are.
And you ask them a question back and you suddenly find yourself having a full on conversation with this stranger, finding out a lot more about them and vice versa.
After just one long conversation you feel like you have a deeper understanding of who this person is, what motivates them, what they like/don't like, what values they share with you.
You feel a connection with them.
That person is no longer a complete stranger to you, because you know more about them and were able to get past surface level and build an emotional connection with them.
Now, imagine scenario A is short text posts and scenario B is long text/carousel posts.
The longer, deeper level of interaction from scenario B built a genuine emotional connection between the two people aka you, the writer and them, the reader.
But scenario A was just a flashing moment of fun or intrigue and you forget about the person and the post pretty quickly after.
Does this mean short text posts are rubbish?
No.
Because social media is, primarily considered, a top of funnel channel.
You use it to grab people's attention and drive them to your longer form content (what you are reading right now). And you build a deeper emotional connection with them in a space you own (your email list) vs a space that is rented (social media).
Lesson:
Depends on your goals.
But if you just want to get people from social media to your email list, I wouldn't go to deep with your social media content.
Short text posts will be perfect for you.
If you want to get clients from social media directly, you might want to mix in some longer form posts in there to build deeper connections with your audience. Earn their trust. (scroll down to the p.s. for more on this)
I hope you can forgive me for lying to you 😆
Cheers,
Matt Barker
P.S...want to get clients from social media?
Then your first step has to be taking The Digital Copywriter.
It includes the content strategy I use to grow followers and attract new clients.
Plus the 4 types of content (with frameworks) to make writing the posts dead easy.
So if you're ready write posts fast and attract new clients: