Trying to re-tell stories through twitter
To begin with, I found it easy to find what to say about each story as I aimed more to re-tell the headline or change it to something that would get more attention.
5 min readNov 11, 2019
In some cases, the story is one that at first glance, is surprising or would not be believed. For example, the story I chose about apple’s credit card was at least personally surprising to me as I had zero idea that they offered such a product. The fact there was gender discrimination from the bank that ran it I decided to have as the focus of the post as it would draw the most attention in the current social climate.
Of course if this post was made on a twitter account for news or even perhaps my personal one, I’d include tagging apple in the tweet and include that even Steve Woznick who co-founded apple was affected and also tag him.
Another example is the story around the Russian scholar who was found with the hands of his lover in a bag. This kind of story is shocking but to me is also a “wait, what?!?” moment in that at first hearing about it, people will doubt the story. So when it came to creating a tweet for this, I chose to simply re-do the BBC headline but add the interesting parts I gleamed from the article as to potentially grab more attention.
Moving on to the recent boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul, this is the tweet that would have the most traits associated with social media news as it is a big event with online personalities that have a huge following. Whilst the tweet itself is short and to the point, if posted properly it would of included tagging both fighters and some hashtags associated with the event thereby increasing it’s reach to not only followers of the fighters but also even further to those following the fight through hashtags and outside of their fan’s observations.
With this tweet about Disney+, I again felt it best to keep it short and to the point but have the main point of the article be in it. The headline does not specify the date itself and neither does the tweet but it states the gap between launch dates prompting people to click the article and read further to get an exact date rather than try to work It out themselves.
I also followed the same tactic with this tweet about retailer Clintons looking to restructure. I put focus on the number of employees it has and the fact there might be store closures coming as recent stories in the job sector have focused around employment and companies dissolving.
With these next tweets, I attempted to change up the format from a basic re-structure and include things like quotes or emoticons.
A topical tweet is this one focusing on the prime ministers’ comments on the recent flooding in northern England. By including his rather controversial statement in the tweet, it will attract attention and incite readers to engage with the tweet in retweets and read further into the article.
With this tweet about the pop-up pokemon store I took a direct quote from a twitter account associated with the store and used that to draw attention with the fact one of it’s key items is sold out. My personal spin on it, is to draw attention to it by calling it “arguably it’s most popular item” and point out this has happened days before the temporary shop is due to close. The use of shock emoticons adds to the surprise factor of the story. I would also include a tag for the pokemon company, the twitter account the quote is from and Nintendo as well.
