How short on Twitter? Give Twitter followers some space. Space to include a comment when they retweet your message, that is. Yes, you have 140 characters to work with on Twitter. And that's not much. But leave 20 characters for your followers' notes, and you'll encourage retweeting. That's right: 120 characters is the new 140. Reach readers online. Want to get the word … [Read more...] about 120 characters is the new black
Reach readers online
Pad prowess
How to write and design for tablets Call it the bailout point. People reading news on an iPad spent an average of 78.3 seconds on stories that they didn't finish. That's according to EyeTrack: Tablet, The Poynter Institute's latest eyetracking study. So what's a writer to do? Place a "gold coin" at the bailout point to keep people reading, Poynter researchers … [Read more...] about Pad prowess
Don’t fall off a website cliff
Where visitors look now Jakob Nielsen was not surprised. In a 2010 eyetracking study, the usability expert analyzed 57,453 fixations, or instances when users look at something on a page. He found — once again, as he had so many times before — that people don't scroll much. In fact, he found that that people spend time looking: Above the fold 80% of the time Below … [Read more...] about Don’t fall off a website cliff
Avoid ‘brilliant images of fuzzy concepts’
Visitors tune out superfluous pictures When BNSF Railroad put a photo of a train on its homepage, visitors ignored it. Moreover, they had trouble finding the top stories they were looking for. Visitors tune out irrelevant images. And those images make it harder for visitors to find the information they actually want, according to a 2005 eyetracking study by Jakob … [Read more...] about Avoid ‘brilliant images of fuzzy concepts’
Why, oh why aren’t they answering?
Question posts don't increase interactions Do questions increase likes and comments on Facebook? No … and yes, according to 2011 research by Momentus Media. Momentus looked at more than 10,000 status updates, dividing them into those that contained a question mark and those that did not. Then they compared those to interaction rates, or likes and comments per post … [Read more...] about Why, oh why aren’t they answering?