For many people, engaging with brands on social media is a part of everyday life. This presents an opportunity for companies to position themselves in front of both current and potential customers.
Whether you’re targeting other businesses or marketing directly to consumers, your social media posts can help your audience get to know your company in an informal, no-pressure environment. That’s why it’s crucial for online businesses — or any company that maintains an online presence — to understand how to write a social media post that catches and holds the attention of their target audience.
Why Writing Good Copy for Social Media Is So Important
Learning how to write a social media post for your business takes practice, but great content can be an integral part of an online marketing strategy — and for good reason. Social media platforms let you reach a large audience within seconds without breaking the bank.
By getting the right copy in front of your target demographic, you can potentially reap numerous benefits, including:
- Lead generation
- Increased brand loyalty
- Higher conversion rates
- Improved customer satisfaction
- Enhanced brand and product visibility
- Insight into customers’ likes, values and interests
- More accurate metrics for marketing and advertising campaigns
Social Media and SEO
It’s also important not to underestimate the importance of social media in SEO. Although social media posts don’t directly impact search engine optimization, they can influence it in other ways. For example, social shares, likes and comments may signal to search engines that you’re providing useful content to your target audience, which can ultimately influence rankings. This can increase your brand’s visibility and help generate organic traffic to your website.
What Makes Social Media Copy Great
Although each company’s approach to creating content for social media may differ from others in the space, great social media posts typically have several key attributes:
- They entertain
- They inspire engagement
- They’re attention-grabbing
- They’re easy to digest
However, what defines great social media copy is likely to change depending on the platform, and what works for LinkedIn may not be ideal for Twitter.
How to Make a Tweet Stand Out
The key to writing great tweets is keeping it short and conversational. Although Twitter permits up to 280 characters per tweet, the sweet spot is typically closer to 100 characters, including spaces.
Twitter is also a hotbed of hashtags, so give your tweet context and promote engagement by including relevant hashtag phrases. Just be sure to limit yourself to one or two, and keep them short. If you aren’t sure where to start, Twitter offers free tools for monitoring trending conversations and events, which can help you keep your brand current and relevant on this crowded platform.
Using Facebook to Your Advantage
Facebook remains popular across numerous age groups and demographics. However, because users’ feeds tend to be cluttered and change quickly, you won’t have much time to attract attention, so it’s important to keep posts short, sharp and clear. Many Facebook users access the platform from smartphones or other handheld devices, so optimizing your content for mobile is crucial.
When creating Facebook posts, avoid industry jargon and marketing speak, which can negatively impact content in the platform’s algorithm.
Facebook users have come to expect visuals, so include creative elements, such as eye-catching photos and videos, with your posts. Just be sure not to use overused stock images, which can be off-putting to customers.
Building Authority Through LinkedIn Posts
As a professional networking platform, LinkedIn is useful for positioning your business as an authority on a subject. Consequently, great LinkedIn posts often contain business or career advice, intellectual property or links to crucial press releases.
Many successful LinkedIn posts also use mentions (which begin with the @ symbol) to tag influential or notable connections. This can increase your reach if the mentioned person shares or comments on your content. And, if you’re interested in presenting long-form content, you can also benefit by learning how to write an article on LinkedIn.
How to Write Social Media Posts That Capture Your Target Audience
Because most social media platforms are crowded with content, you’ll have to compete for attention. By learning how to make social media posts pop, you can cut through the noise and help your brand stand out. Fortunately, writing catchy social media posts isn’t difficult. By following these basic social media content writing tips, you can write posts that stand out from the pack:
- Know your audience. Understanding your target audience is a crucial step in creating relevant, attention-catching social media posts. Although knowing your target audience’s age, income range, and educational background is crucial, you should also understand their needs and likes. Fortunately, many social media platforms, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, provide free analytics to help you learn more about your audience’s online behavior.
- Be intentional. Before you write a social media post, you should know what message you want to send or what result you hope to achieve. Great posts ultimately reflect your intent, whether that’s highlighting a product, improving your brand’s reputation, or driving traffic to your website.
- Use a consistent voice. Your writer’s voice reflects your vocabulary, tone and syntax, and a strong voice can make you uniquely identifiable. By developing a clear, relatable voice that’s consistent across platforms, you’ll influence how your audience views your business.
- Add personality. While being professional is important, using a casual tone that highlights your personality lets your audience see your business as friendly, relevant and approachable.
- Don’t waste words. In today’s fast-paced world, time is a commodity. Keeping posts short, simple and catchy demonstrates an understanding and respect for your readers’ time.
- Never create clickbait. Sensational headlines or hooks are great, but any linked content must live up to the hype. Otherwise, you’re creating clickbait, which is a major red flag for a potential customer.
- Edit and proofread. Editing and proofreading to minimize errors and clarify your message should be a standard part of your writing process. Even a single typo can convey carelessness and diminish your credibility.
What Should a Social Media Post Include
Regardless of the platform, most effective social media posts contain some key components. If you want to create copy that draws and keeps a reader’s attention, incorporate these vital elements.
The Hook
Your post’s first sentence or phrase, known as the hook, is often your best chance of drawing in readers. A good hook should pique a casual browser’s interest so they stop scrolling. Fortunately, an eye-catching hook doesn’t have to be difficult to write if you incorporate one or more of these elements:
- Headlines: A great headline creates promise, enticing potential readers to continue.
- Fascinating facts: Lead with an interesting fact about your chosen topic. Besides catching a reader’s attention, an interesting fact can define you as a reliable source of information.
- Strong statements: Set an authoritative tone for your post by hooking readers with a strong opening statement. Try statements that are intriguing, compelling or polarizing for added impact.
- Great quotes: Inspiring, controversial or insightful quotes are a great way to introduce a post. They can evoke an emotional response and convince a follower to continue reading.
- Metaphors and similes: Hook readers by inspiring them to look at a topic differently. Good metaphors and similes can surprise and delight an unsuspecting social media user.
- Open-ended questions: Start with an open-ended question to get people thinking. Questions naturally keep followers reading because they want to discover the answer.
Valuable content
When you provide valuable content, your social media posts are more likely to be read, discussed and shared. However, what defines valuable content can vary by reader, industry, platform and whether you specialize in B2B or B2C products and services.
Valuable content may be original or curated and can include:
- Giveaways
- Industry insights
- Educational content
- Career or business advice
- Inspirational stories
- Tips for product use
- Links to unique articles
- Inside information on your company
- Solutions for pain points
- Previews for forthcoming products or services
Links
Interesting links can drive traffic to your website and may even improve its SEO. You can increase the chance of click-through by using relevant anchor text and/or enticing, accompanying images.
Don’t just link to your homepage, though. Link deep to specific pages and posts on your site. By using deep links to direct readers to specific pages, you can draw attention to product information, exclusive offers and other value-added content.
If you aren’t using anchor text, make sure visible URLs are clean and concise. Long URLs take up space and can look suspicious, so it’s important to convert them to shortened or branded links. URL shorteners, such as Ow.ly or Bitly, compress or customize URLs, optimizing them for social media.
Hashtags
Hashtags, which begin with a # regardless of platform, are words and phrases that identify a post’s topic or theme. They help people follow online conversations and find interesting or relevant content, particularly from accounts they don’t follow.
To effectively incorporate hashtags in your social media posts, remember:
- Hashtags don’t use spaces, symbols or punctuation marks, so if you need to include more than one word, just mash them together.
- Hashtags should be simple and easy to remember.
- A blend of trending, branded, popular or industry-relevant hashtags can have more impact.
- Avoid choosing only overused hashtags, as your post may get lost in the sheer amount of traffic they generate.
White Space
Because white space is essentially the empty space around your content’s other elements, it may seem odd to consider it a crucial component of a social media post. However, long walls of unbroken text can be off-putting to even diehard followers. Posts that incorporate plenty of white space are usually more readable and easier to navigate. Plus, when used well, white space can draw attention to important aspects of your content, such as brand messaging or calls to action.
Creating white space can be easily accomplished by:
- Shortening sentences
- Aligning text
- Incorporating bulleted or numbered lists
- Using plenty of line breaks
- Limiting paragraphs to two or three sentences
Visual Elements
Although not every social media post should or will contain visual elements, images are an effective tool for drawing attention. The right image can also provide context for your words, evoke emotions and ensure your brand stays in readers’ minds long after they’ve read your post.
When choosing a visual element for your post, make sure to complement the tone, message and intent of your content. Options include:
- Photos
- Artwork
- Video clips
- Memes
- Cartoons
- GIFs
- Animation
When including creative content in your posts, always use copyright-free images or material that you own, and make sure the resolution is compatible with the platform.
A Call to Action
A call to action is a prompt that invites the reader to take a recommended action. Although a CTA isn’t essential, or even relevant, for every social media post, in the right context it can cue a follower to take a crucial next step, such as:
- Claiming an offer
- Answering a question
- Visiting a landing page
- Subscribing to a newsletter
- Requesting information
- Ordering or preordering a product
- Connecting with your business on other channels
Outsourcing Your Social Media Posts
Learning how to write for social media can help you broaden your business’s reach and connect with your customers, and it doesn’t have to be a chore. In fact, your audience can usually sense when you’re trying too hard, and the most engaging social posts are often written when you relax and let yourself have fun.
However, writing for social media isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. If it’s time to refresh your content strategy, why not give professional content writing services a try? Connect with Crowd Content’s network of talented writers for compelling content that gets results.
