How to Start Writing Online: The Ship 30 for 30 Ultimate Guide

Uses lists and bullets whenever possible. Tweets are small, which means you need to figure out how to compress a lot of information into a teeny tiny container. One of the easiest ways to do this is to swap prose for lists. Besides, readers enjoy “skimming” bullets way more than they do sifting through prose. As a rule of thumb: anytime you have a ... See more

Give each Tweet its own “mini headline.” The first sentence of each Tweet is the most important. If you are writing an “actionable takeaways” Thread, the first sentence of each Tweet should be the actionable takeaway. This allows readers to quickly scroll through your Thread, skim the mini-headlines, and then decide if they want to dig deeper and r... See more

Tell a storyShare a frameworkProvide actionable takeaways (teaching the reader how to do something) 

Readers on Twitter, in particular, love essays and threads that:

WHO is this for?WHAT is this about?WHY should you read this? (What PROMISE are you making to the reader? What do they get in return?)

The secret to writing effective lead-in Tweets is to answer three very important questions for the reader (going back to our Headline framework):

What separates writing that is fun, easy to read, even musical, is writing that alternates rhythms—fast vs slow, quick vs descriptive, etc. The more your writing alternates between opposites, the more movement it has, and the more the reader feels like they are being taken on a journey (opposed to hacking their way through a textbook). 

For example, anytime you find yourself writing a paragraph that is "listing" things out, it's worth questioning whether that paragraph can be re-formatting in the form of a bulleted list. "The first thing you want to do when writing online is prep the page. Then, once you've prepped the page, see where you can turn long paragraphs into short bullet... See more

Headline: What is this piece about? Who is it for? What will the reader get in exchange for reading through to the end? AND, why should they trust you (what's your credibility)?‍Introduction: (Repeat the information from the headline with slightly more detail.) What is this piece about? Who is it for? What will the reader get in exchange for readin... See more