In this day of declining readership of print newspapers, journalists are using social media platforms for to attract more readers, but just sharing a piece does not guarantee that it will get read. If you want to engage more readers, add a summary headline while sharing it on Twitter and a question headline on Facebook. The simple technique will help grab attention of readers to your pieces.
Communication professor and noted eye-tracking researcher Sheree Josephson of Weber
State University in Ogden, Utah, and Jessica S. Miller, a graduate of the same university, conducted an eye-tracking study on 32 users of Twitter and Facebook to check effective headline phasing techniques in social media.
Facebook and Twitter newsfeeds were created specifically for the study using Photoshop. The social media pages were designed in order to control the content for comparison purposes. They also conducted a short survey to get the participants’ opinion on the effectiveness of these headline techniques.
The researchers found that question headlines fared considerably better in Facebook in both the eye-tracking tests and survey responses. It also appeared that Twitter statements received more visual attention than Twitter questions and are believed to be more effective, probably because Twitter is designed to spread information and is increasingly becoming the place where news breaks. And questions may be more suited to Facebook because it specializes in encouraging interaction.
To read the abstract of the study:
Josephson, S., & Miller, J. S. (2015). Just State the Facts on Twitter: Eye Tracking Shows That Readers May Ignore Questions Posted by News Organizations On Twitter But Not on Facebook. Visual Communication Quarterly, 22(2), 94-105.
