WhatsUp With WhatsApp?

Welcome to Purlos!

Making the jump to WhatsApp can seem pretty daunting, right?

Sure, social media is a fair bit different from the emails and letters that you're used to, but that doesn't mean that you need a whole new skillset and a three year degree. All it takes is a bit of common sense, mixed with an understanding of who you're going to be talking to, with a pinch of contemporary lingo.

Enough talking about it, though. Let's jump right in with the golden rule of WhatsApp messaging:

SENDING A WHATSAPP MESSAGE IS NOT THE SAME AS SENDING AN EMAIL!

Seems simple enough, but this is actually a significant hurdle that lots of people understandably stumble over. On the surface, they're both types of messaging software with a near limitless character count. Not like a Tweet where you're capped at 280 characters, or an SMS message where the more you write, the more it tends to cost.

The key difference is that WhatsApp is designed for quick, interactive, and live communication. When we send something, we want it to be easy to read and understand. It's a snippet of your best information, with only the most relevant parts kept in. Remember, keeping the message short is both imperative and specific to the question; one question may need a longer response than another, but that doesn't mean that we're going to info-dump. Let's have a look at a real-world example:

We keep the tone friendly, informative, and concise. Nobody wants to read a confusing essay on something that can be said in a fraction of the words, let alone young people who are anxious about starting college, in the midst of exams, and with busy personal lives. There aren't any unnecessarily long words, and the call to action is clear. Using the above example, want the thought process of whoever has asked the question to go something like this:

The reality is a chunk of writing is intimidating, and it's not accessible to every student. You will have applicants who are dyslexic, use text to speech readers, have additional learning needs, or are just busy. Walls of information are equivalent to the code from The Matrix if you can't engage with it, or don't want to.

Remember the age old adage; if you send a WhatsApp message, but nobody bothers to read it, was it sent at all?

Social Media, inclusive of WhatsApp, is a constantly evolving form and that means staying on top of trends, terminology, and emoji use. There is a very fine, and dangerous line, between relating to your students and being deemed 'cringe'.

Some terms and emoji's you should steer clear of completely, and everything else needs to be used in moderation. Read your incoming messages to see what's being used and what's still relevant, and consider how you can sprinkle some of these into your chats.

To give you a bit of an idea about the do's and don'ts, check out the table below. A general rule of thumb is to limit your use of emoji's and slang terms. We'd recommend having so more than one emoji, and one abbreviation or the like, per message. Don't worry, we'll go through this more in the next article.

As long as your message is friendly and conversational, there is no such thing as too few emoji's or uses of colloquialisms. There is, however, always the risk of overdoing it and alienating your readership. It's obvious when you've tried too hard, and it never has the desired effect. You need to retain authority and control the conversation so that you can collect the answers that you want, and not deviate to the point where you're getting unrelated, or pointless, replies.

Now, it's time to recap our five, key conversation design pointers:

With that, let's call it a day here. Check back next time for a deep dive into designing the optimal conversation!