Writing for social media & attracting an audience
Social media is a vital tool for your brand in helping to attract an audience, which means you should keep them engaged once they’ve found your page.
Many users find social media pages through websites and blogs. It’s therefore important to consider how to make your site discoverable, which should include links to your platforms.
Once your audience has found your socials, the next challenge is to keep them hooked.
Nowadays, there’s so much noise on social media, making it increasingly hard to become noticed. There’s certainly a lot out there, from niche brands to the more generic ones, meaning you should work hard to ensure that yours is getting the attention it deserves.
It can be challenging knowing where to start when it comes to writing good content for social media, but if you learn to do this well you should have little to no issues with it.
Tips on writing good content for socials
Be interactive
Include clear CTAs (calls to actions) in your posts’ copy because these encourage your followers to carry out a certain action and interact with your brand. It could mean asking a question or telling them to click a link to an article you’ve recently posted.
If you’re directing the audience to an article, use command words. For instance, it would be better to say, ‘Tap to read the new post!’ rather than ‘The new post is out now.’ By doing this, you’re telling them to complete a certain task, making them more inclined to do it.
You should keep in mind that when writing for an audience, write ‘you’ to address them directly and interact with their comments to show that you care.
Write short & clear captions
Write short captions in order to keep the attention of your readers. There’s nothing worse than looking at something that has tonnes of writing and isn’t even split up into paragraphs.
Instagram and LinkedIn are the best places to write slightly longer copy. For example, people often use Instagram as their blog, such as skincare gurus, who may post a particular product and review it in the caption. If you want to do this, split your writing up into short, concise, paragraphs with 1 or 2 emojis to break it up, or consider using Instagram Guides.
Posts should be clear to understand; always proofread them before posting. They should be suitable for your audience to skim read. Many people will go on socials when they’re on public transport, for example, where they will have limited time to absorb the information.
Consider your tone
It’s important to use a consistent brand tone when writing copy for social media. Try to write in a similar way to your audience, enabling them to form a connection with your brand. If they speak in a conversational way, for instance, your brand should reflect this.
One way that will make it easier for you to establish a tone of voice is to create a Style Guide. When you hit a blank and are not sure how you should be writing, you’ll have this to refer back to, which will also be a handy tool for your website or blog.
The tone used on your socials should reflect your site and vice-versa to avoid misleading your audience, as you should aim to present your brand as trustworthy.
Ensure visuals & content match
Make sure that your posts and content match to avoid confusing your audience. For instance, you can’t talk about your favourite place to eat in the caption but post a picture of a book. It doesn’t make sense.
The content you post should be informative and make your audience curious to find out about something. Don’t forget to clearly signpost the link to your site in your post. You should also make sure that the link is relevant, meaning the text and images you’ve used on your site should match with what you’ve written on socials and the image you’ve posted.
If users tap a link on Instagram and it doesn’t match with the content you’ve posted on your blog, it can present you as unreliable. If readers are confused, they will click off and find something else. You also shouldn’t be presenting anything you write online as ‘clickbait.’
Tips for writing engaging posts to attract an audience on socials
Always signpost social media icons
Audiences may find your brand’s social media directly through your site. It’s therefore important that you clearly signpost links to socials either through text, icons or even both. These can be advertised in your posts or in a visible place on your website.
For example, this van hire company based in Newcastle and Manchester have used bold, commanding text on their page that says ‘Follow us: our Instagram page.’ Below is their social handle in bold and a ‘Find out more’ button that will take you to their Instagram.
They have used direct language telling their audience to visit their social media which will make them more likely to do it. It will also enable customers to get to know them better through their socials, which include fantastic shots of the festival’s they’ve recently been to.
Make your posts SEO-friendly
It’s important to make sure that your blog can be found by those using search engines, which means that all your posts should include keywords that will rank them higher up.
A good way to ensure you’re using the right words is to use Google Keyword Planner. It allows you to find out which popular words and phrases users are currently searching for, which can then be incorporated into your blog post titles, making them discoverable.
There won’t be an increase in visitors straight away. It takes time and effort, but you will eventually see the results. With more users on your blog, they should be clicking the icons taking them to your socials, which will result in plenty of new followers to engage with.