Social and short-form

Start with a single platform where your buyers already spend time. Two platforms done properly beat five done badly. If you have not chosen yet, read Pick the channel where your audience already gathers first.

Then picture one person reading. Not an audience, one buyer with one problem. Write to one person explains how. In a feed this matters even more, because nobody stops for a post that is addressed to everyone.

Before you write a word, finish this sentence: "After reading this, the reader will believe or do ___." If you need two sentences, you have two posts. The method in Distil to one message works at post size too.

Good ideas are already around you: a question a buyer asked this week, a mistake you saw, a number from your own dashboard, a decision you made and why. Keep a running list in a notes app.

The opening line is the headline, the hook and often the only part read. So write it first, and write five versions. Do not stop at the first one that sounds fine.

Then test each version against four questions:

• Is it urgent? Does it say why now?
• Is it unique? Could only you say it?
• Is it useful? Does it promise something the reader can use?
• Is it ultra-specific? Does it have a number, a name or a concrete detail?

A hook that passes none of them is wallpaper. Compare "Some thoughts on follow-up emails" with "The follow-up email that takes two minutes and gets answered more often than a call". The second names a situation, a time and a result the reader wants. You do not need all four every time, but aim for at least two.

After the hook, give the reader the idea in a few short paragraphs. A simple frame holds most posts together:

1. The hook, one line.
2. The point, in one or two sentences.
3. One example, so the point is concrete.
4. One ask, or a closing line that makes the point stick.

Keep it to one idea and one ask, as you would in an email. A post that makes three points makes none of them. If the ask is a reply, make it easy to answer with a word or a number.

Short-form rewards chopped fragments. One line. Then another. Then another. It looks like rhythm and reads like a string of stubs. A single flowing thought that packs a lot in is better than ten clipped lines, even where everyone else is chopping. Concise is the goal, not chopped.

Do not start from nothing every time. Take one article, one newsletter or one recorded call and pull out three to five separate ideas. Each becomes its own post with its own hook. Link back to the long piece in only one of them. See Content and long-form and Email and newsletter for the longer formats these posts come from.

Set aside 45 minutes once a week:

1. Ten minutes: choose three ideas from your list.
2. Fifteen minutes: write five hooks for each idea and pick the best.
3. Fifteen minutes: write the three posts.
4. Five minutes: schedule them with a tool such as Buffer, or post them by hand on the day.

A rhythm you can hold for a year beats a burst you abandon in March. Consistency beats brilliance covers how to set that rhythm.

• Writing the post first and the hook last. By then you are too attached to the opening you drafted.
• Putting two or three asks in one post. Pick the one that matters.
• Copying the cadence of the biggest accounts in your feed. Their format is not your voice. See Find your voice and protect it.
• Treating likes as the result. Likes are cheap. Replies and conversations are the real measure.

Keep a simple note with the hook, the date and what happened. After four weeks, look for patterns. Do replies come from posts with numbers in the hook? Do posts that start from a buyer's question outperform the rest? Count what matters to your business: replies from the right people, profile visits from buyers, conversations that start in the inbox.

You are on track when the writing takes less time each week and at least one post a fortnight leads to a message from someone you would want as a customer. Then follow Test, ship, iterate: keep the hooks that work, change one thing at a time.