The Curve in Learning Social Media

October 20, 2010

This morning I attended the Social Media breakfast at Talula’s Restaurant in Madison. I discovered my learning curve in the first five minutes of the excellent talk by Steve Roller on “Social Media and the Art of Copywriting”. He mentioned his site WebContentCopywriting.com and his business, Conversational Writing, LLC and it dawned on me that I going to learn more about writing copy, not copyrighting. Coming from an art background, where our web site is specific to protect the rights of artists in image reproduction, I had mistakenly thought I would be learning about copyrights, not copywriting. The second ah ha moment came when Steve Roller was describing Big Idea #1 in how to use direct response marketing and connect with your audience. Among other things he mentioned LOL means “Laugh out Loud”. Not “Lots of Love?” My kid sent me that the other day and I thought it was a show of affection.

I don’t think anyone noticed the pink flush of my embarrassment while Roller quickly moved on to Big Idea #2 reminding us that Social Media is about business. While having an honest interest in our customer, we should strive to write compelling and persuasive copy. And how do we do that? Big Idea #3 acknowledged the skill needed, but gave us some specific pointers to help us hone the art of writing. Steve covered several other points illustrating his ideas with some pretty amusing case studies.

Steve Roller’s packed short talk was full of concrete tips, good hand outs and lots of avenues to keep learning. I particularly like his tips: Don’t try too hard, write the way you talk and focus on one idea.

If all the Breakfast meetings are this enlightening, perhaps I should get myself to another one-maybe the one for “old people.”

LOL
Liese Pfeifer
Integrated Art Group