If we give our heads to text writing, we cannot go beyond the much-emphasized truth that draws our attention to the three most important factors: target audience, message, platform.

That is, before we begin work, we need to see clearly to whom, what, and where we are going to communicate. After that, we can only deal with the following, the composition of our target group, their shopping and communication habits, the grammatical criteria of the message, or the specifics of the platforms that host everything. In this article, the latter will be the focus.

So let’s take a look at the most common virtual surfaces and their criteria with a copywriter’s eye!

Social media

The texts of Instagram and Facebook posts can be put under a hat in the first place due to the peculiarities of the social media platform, but it is important to emphasize that based on the experience of recent years, the target audience is becoming more and more separated. Due to this rearrangement (typically the older age group of the user) we can count on more reading time on Facebook than on Instagram, and even the longform post may work in certain product types and industries, which may include a more detailed description. (With this solution, it is not necessary to write just one striking sentence, as we can trust the time spent by older or previously committed readers on us.) It is important to note that like everything on social media, this format is worth testing and measuring, as it is close to nor is it sure to hit our audience, but if they do, and they get valuable content from us, we can keep their attention and trust for a long time.

In this opinion, Instagram is different. It is typically used by the younger age group and remains (also) popular because of its original function: sharing pictures and videos. If you still want to grab the attention of the audience with text (also), it is worth doing it briefly and concisely: so that they do not have to click the Next button, approx. we have 120 characters. Communication on this interface is more permissible with emoticons due to the age group of the target audience and the fewer characters recommended, so let's use them with confidence in order to attract attention and condense one mood at a time.

Ad

When we talk about online copywriting rules, at first everyone might think of different ads, as the character limit and keywords play the biggest role here. Both Google Ads and social media interfaces impose strict restrictions on the number of characters, however, this is only a slice of their complex operation. Getting your ad to the right place, time, and audience is the end of a long workflow that can be crowned with well-composed, ad- and user-friendly text. So it’s worth testing on these interfaces as well, finding and applying strong keywords, and smuggling in as much and as valuable information as possible within the allowable character limit.

TV spot, rádio spot

Perhaps the most strictly regulated format is the various commercial spots. Many say that due to the proliferation of stream providers, it is becoming less and less relevant to talk about these platforms in terms of advertising, but the data show that the Hungarian population generates millions of viewers and listeners to shows every day. Perhaps the two most important criteria for drafting advertising spots are time and content. When using extremely valuable advertising minutes, literally every second, even tenth and hundredth of a second, counts, however, as far as text is concerned, it is not necessarily worth making the most of the time available. So, if possible, don’t talk through your voice over all the seconds, as for such complex surfaces, less can really be more. This is especially true for TV commercials, where we can also use the visual world to complete our message, but we can also use on the radio musics, sounds, effects - all of which can carry extra meaning for audience. However, if the goal is to provide as much information as possible over a given period of time (e.g., during certain phases of product launch, when new promotions appear, for specifically informative messages), you may want to write the text of a spot while testing it several times: with stopwatch, read aloud. If we fit into the frame, a professional voice over will fit in as well.

Slogan

Writing an advertising slogan can already be considered a hybrid area: we need to apply it consistently on both virtual and printed surfaces, as such a word or phrase will, in a good case, be associated with the brand for years or decades. However, different interfaces can give room for a little creativity: when writing a new slogan, we can immediately consider possible adaptation possibilities: how would this sentence work with music, sound, video, image? Social media and advertising spots offer plenty of opportunities for experimentation, but we cannot neglect the rule that a slogan should only work in print. Whether this is an advantage or a disadvantage is up to us.

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