7 Social Media Content Writing Tips
The ever-changing social media algorithms make it harder to get engagement on social media posts. With some content writing tips, however, you can make your message more appealing to more people.
If you invest time, effort and money into posting on social media, I am sure you would want to get a good return on your investment. That return should see you meeting or exceeding the goals you have identified for each social media platform.
But if you post without a social media strategy that outlines how each platform will help you accomplish your business goals, many of your efforts will be wasted.
Having a social media strategy and action plan, based on your unique business goals, resources and available time, is essential to your success.
Even with a well laid out action plan, you still need to create social media posts and content that speak to your identified audience and inspire them to take action.
The actions they can take include engagement (likes, comments, shares), visiting your blog or a landing page, or buying something.
In this article, I share seven social media content writing tips for creating posts that get the attention of your target audience and inspire engagement.
7 Social Media Content Writing Tips to Increase Engagement
1. Do your research
If you want your audience to notice and engage with your social posts, you need to make them highly relevant to your audience.
The more relevant your posts are, the more success you will have.
But relevance in general is not enough. Take the time to truly understand your audience. Start with the general demographic information and then go deeper.
What needs, obstacles or challenges do they have?
Pick a need or challenge that might be a high priority for them right now, and develop content and social media posts providing them with a solution.
PRO TIP: To connect with your audience on an emotional level, share success stories of your previous satisfied customers. This will help them envision their own success as a result of using your product or solution and make them feel positive about you.
2. Speak their language
Take your research further, and learn what language your ideal clients use to communicate their needs or challenges.
Use this language when writing your posts to make sure your content resonates with your audience. You’ll show them you truly understand them and their challenges.
For example, a post you write on LinkedIn for senior level executives will sound very different from a post you write on Facebook for new moms. Not only do these two groups of people have different challenges and points of view, but their language – the exact phrasing they use to speak about their needs and challenges – differs greatly too.
3. Develop your voice
Although you write social media posts in the language of your target audience, the overall message should be written in your own voice.
Your voice (or your brand voice) refers to the personality and emotion infused into all your marketing activities and social interactions online.
You create that voice with the language and tone you use when writing your content or interacting with your audience to help them see you in a certain light.
This voice is primarily influenced by your or your company’s personality, your WHY story and the language used by your ideal customers.
This voice needs to be consistent throughout the content you create and the posts you share on social platforms as well as any engagement you have on those social platforms.
This consistency helps your audience connect with you emotionally as well as build trust and identify your social media posts as yours.
4. Be positive
Maintain positivity throughout your content and social media posts.
This doesn’t mean every post needs to be happy. There is a huge difference between positive and happy. You want your audience to be excited and inspired by your posts, and that doesn’t always mean happy posts.
In some of your posts, you may choose to share your opinion or take a stand on something important to you and your brand.
But there’s a difference between taking a stand or having an opinion and attacking or criticizing others.
A lot of schoolyard-style bullying happens on social media. Do not participate in it.
Whatever you do, avoid criticizing anyone (or any business) publicly. Criticizing others is not only unprofessional but also dangerous: it draws more negative people to your page and can hurt any trust or credibility you have built with your existing audience.
5. Keep it short and simple
People value their time. If you want your audience to give you their attention, you need to show you value their time too.
Great ways to do this include:
- making your content and posts easy to read by writing at an eighth-grade reading level
- using headings, bullets and lists where possible to make your content or posts easier to scan
- keeping paragraphs to only two or three sentences
- being as succinct as possible when writing on your topic.
6. Use images and videos
Use images, graphics and videos to tell a story. Visual content is more engaging and can often tell the story quicker and more succinctly than words alone can.
In fact, an image or video can often stand alone in social media posts while still conveying the full message to your audience.
Keep in mind that video in particular allows you to connect with your audience on a deeper level. People respond well to video as it humanizes you and allows them to get to know you more intimately.
Most platforms have live video features, which can greatly benefit you. An unscripted live video can make you feel vulnerable, but that vulnerability will give your video a level of authenticity lacking in high-quality marketing videos. Those slick marketing videos are more likely to be ignored than a live video featuring you.
For best results, optimize each piece of visual content for the platform you are posting it on to ensure your message is being shared and you look professional.
7. Add a call to action
At the end of your content or social posts, always tell your audience what you want them to do next by including a call to action (CTA).
Without one, most people won’t take any action after reading your content even if they enjoyed it and derived value from it.
CTAs come in different forms and have different purposes. For example, you can motivate your audience to take actions with these CTAs:
- ask them to like or share your social media posts
- ask a question they can answer in the comments
- direct them to another piece of content
- send them to a landing page
- direct them to your website
- get them to subscribe to your newsletter
- ask them to connect with you on other social media channels
Increase your success with these social media content writing
The competition for your audience’s time and attention can be fierce.
The secret to being successful is to not compete. Rather, set yourself apart from your competition by creating and sharing content and social posts your audience will want to consume.
You can bond with your audience over your content by ensuring that everything you write is created with their wants and needs in mind. Do your research and know who they are and what they need or want most. Speak to them using their language, consistently conveyed in your brand’s voice.
Keep your content and social posts positive (not to be confused with happy), and ensure they are easy for your audience to consume.
Add images, videos and CTAs to your content to increase its effectiveness and drive measurable results.
Were these content writing tips helpful? If so, please share this blog post on your favorite social media channel.
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8 Comments
Hi Melonie ~ I love all seven of them! I like to add my number 8: use visuals to capture your audience attention. Besides a compelling headline, one attractive looking smiling person might attract more eyeballs than you could ever imagine. 🙂
You are dead on with that one Juan. Images make all the difference!!
Your Comments. Hello Melanie; on the subject of spell check; it may be a friend to the American population, however not to Canadians or others in the world who speak the English language. Americanization of English; the written word, is confusing for many. Microsoft word, is written in the American version, and constantly corrects my blogs, to their version of English. It is very frustrating; knowing that I am spelling correctly the “Queens’ English” which I grew up with. And the American version which keeps directing me to make changes.
I keep adding the changes to the dictionary, but it achieves nothing.
I even had a criticism of my blog from an American viewer, who was confused by my “misspellings” and told me so. What to do about it,
without turning off the reader, and a potential customer? I emailed him back and explained that it was Canadian English Spelling, that was all that I could do. Any suggestions?
@Joanne: I can definitely feel your frustration. Being a Canadian myself, I constantly have to be aware of how my spelling can differ from Americans or Europeans. Deciding which version to go with generally ends up with trying to adhere to American standards, in my case. Opting for “color” instead of “colour” – things like that.
You could always select a different dictionary in Microsoft Word to use, such as British English or Canadian English. Sometimes you need to download the additional language packs but I believe they are free and rather easily accessible via the Microsoft website.
As for turning off a reader/potential customer…c’est la vie. You can’t be perfect but you can certainly do your best. Try to befriend a writer who natively speaks/writes in the style you want to become accustomed to writing in and get them to look over your blogs quickly to ensure that your “lingo” speaks to your audience.
Judging by your writing in your comment, your grasp of the English language is good enough for me but that doesn’t mean you won’t get a few sticklers that will take any opportunity to correct someone in the open. I think the polite thing to do when correcting someone is to attempt a private message so they can simply fix it without having to make it an open forum discussion that detracts from the initial topic presented by the article.
That’s my two cents! Hope it helps! 🙂
Joanne, I feel your frustration as well, although I’m from Germany. I’ve found after much hard work that I have had to remember who the audience is in order to not get frustrated with the American English. I let the dictionary correct me because it’s more important that my customers understand what they are reading rather than me being picky about how its spelled or pronounced. I’m in America now so American English it is.
You have some really good tips to go by for content writing. I don’t know how many blogs I have stopped reading because it was just to long and boring. Keep it sort it is easier to keep their attention and I like the visuals idea as well. I am a visual learner so adding visuals to my blog is easy. As far as the language barrier you have to consider the audience.
You have some really good tips to go by for content writing. I don’t know how many blogs I have stopped reading because it was just to long and boring. Keep it sort it is easier to keep their attention and I like the visuals idea as well. I am a visual learner so adding visuals to my blog is easy. As far as the language barrier you have to consider the audience.