Futuready - A full service creative digital agency
Social Share

How to Write Effective Social Media Content

How many times have you engaged with a social media post and thought you can resonate with its content? Quite often, right? It’s an art to connect with your audience and create a strong impact.

From writing an educational post to sharing personal stories, or creating funny content, social media writers and content creators have got the knack to create highly engaging content.

Social media writing may seem a cakewalk to many, but it requires certain skills to grab the audience’s attention with limited words, and drive them to take the desired action.

If writing successful social media content is your goal, then this blog might help you get started in the right direction. Keep Reading!

First, you must understand your audience in and out before you begin writing.

Create a Buyer Persona for TG

To write personalised content, you must first identify and create a buyer persona, your ideal client, or your target audience. It’s basically creating a fictional character, their demographics and psychographics, behaviour, and likes and dislikes.

Once the base of understanding a buyer persona is established, it becomes much easier to design and develop effective personalised content that connects with them. Here’s how you can create one for your brand or a client:

  • Research your buyer persona
    Research your buyer from different sources. These sources could be salespeople, customers themselves, industry insights collected by the organsation (client), analytics, etc., and organise all the information in a document.
  • Segmentation
    The next step is to segment buyers into different categories such as by industry, job title, etc. In most cases, creating different buyer personas for each industry and job title makes a lot of sense as every category requires different communication as per their goals.
  • Understand roles, goals, and challenges
    A buyer persona also includes understanding the buyer’s interest, pain points, hesitations before buying, habits, and more. You should be aware of who your buyer is, what they do, and what they want.

    Once the segmentation is in place, you can move on to focus on their roles, goals, and challenges. Apart from job roles, a buyer’s different roles at home, in the community, organisations, etc will provide more insights. Similarly, studying the ultimate goals and challenges of the buyer will further enable you to hit the right spot with the marketing strategy and communication.

Tips on writing for social media

Now that we’ve covered all the bases, let’s dive into the tips on how to write for social media.

  • Speak their language
    This is a no-brainer: you must use the language your audience communicates in. All your efforts would go for a toss if your content doesn’t resonate with your audience. Hence, understanding certain nuances, slang, or jargon is an essential element while writing for social media.

    For example, what you would write for a LinkedIn account for entry-level executives would be different from writing for a Facebook account for a makeup sale. As these two groups of audiences have different priorities, challenges and outlook, the writing style would change accordingly.
  • Develop your voice
    Developing your voice simply means infusing your or your client’s brand personality and emotion in the marketing communication across all channels. Using your personal experience, anecdotes, and insights for generating content can set you apart and help you develop an emotional connection with the audience, and convert them into buying customers.
  • More spacing, more often
    One of the most annoying things as an online reader is encountering giant walls of text. Regardless of the content quality, an online reader doesn’t prefer reading long paragraphs of 30 sentences. As a writer, you must read and go through your content from a customer or a reader’s point of view. Ask yourself this: would you read 5 long paragraphs or 15 short paragraphs? The answer is obvious, right?

    Using space after every or couple of sentences would make your content more readable and easy to digest. Additionally, visually it looks easier to read without scaring non readers and readers alike.

    The same rule can be applied to different formats of online content, be it a video post, reel, story, carousel, static, etc. Try to break down your sentences into multiple lines and keep your copies crisp and concise. In case there’s no choice but to write long paragraphs, then you should increase the font size.
  • Sensory Description
    Becoming an expert in writing sense-based descriptions takes years of practice (for many). Sensory descriptions include detailing a sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. A successful writer employs these five senses and leverages their powers to take their audience/readers on a journey.

    Sensory descriptions let your reader imagine the experience and visualise every detail of a given situation. They not only engage your audience/reader but also make them feel an emotion or relive a memory in a small world created by them. You too can leverage sensory description in your social media writing and stand out from the crowd.
  • Be positive
    Creating positive posts is not just about using positive words - it is about inspiring people and getting them excited by your content. Being positive online also refers to avoiding criticising anyone or any business on online platforms. Not only does it come off as unprofessional, but also attracts negative attention and audience to your account. This can hurt your reputation and credibility among online users as well as your loyal customers.
  • Keep it short and simple
    The thumb rule of practicing brevity while writing social media posts will help your audience to easily skim through your content. Today, with a plethora of options vying for an audience’s time and attention, writing long-winded copies will not cut it. Your audience needs information on the spot and at lightning speed.

    Also, don’t assume that your audience has the same knowledge as you for them to get the message of your content. Make it idiot-proof! Furthermore, using headlines, bullets, and lists, and writing in short paragraphs with only two or three sentences will help you see the success that you wish for.
  • Use images and videos
    Complex ideas are often best explained through visuals. In the online space, graphics, images, and videos are used for the same purpose and garners a lot of engagement. It helps convey the message quicker and more effectively than any other type of post.

    Through videos, you can connect with your audience emotionally and move them in many ways. Most people working in social media prefer using videos to communicate. Also, with the help of videos, a brand/organisation can humanise its marketing style.

    Many social media platforms now provide the feature to go live and interact with their audience. This is another way to connect with people. You or your client can either go on live alone or collaborate with another account or brand for more views. Live videos help your brands or clients show their real and vulnerable side which is quite rare and appreciated on online platforms.
  • Add a call to action
    What’s the point of creating content when the audience is not taking the desired action that you want them to take? Your marketing or writing goals are incomplete if you’re unsuccessful in engaging them and driving them to do the needful. Call to action (CTAs) guide and motivate users to take the next step, which could be as simple as liking, sharing, and commenting on the post, visiting a website or a landing page, booking an appointment, or subscribing to your emailer. As cliche as it may seem, you must not underestimate the power of CTAs while writing online content.

B2B & B2C writing

Writing content can be categorised into two types: B2B & B2C writing. B2B stands for Business to Business, whereas, B2C stands for Business to Consumers. Each category requires a different writing style to market your content to the target audience.

Below, learn about what each of these types of copywriting is and how you can use different methods with each to create copy that converts for your website.

  • Writing for B2B
    As the name suggests, this style of writing is directed to businesses. When your client’s product or service provides value to other businesses then you must remember a few things in mind while writing for them:
    • Your target audience most likely would be a group of people who are the decision-makers, rather than just one person.
    • B2B writing includes using a professional tone, as your content is meant for other professionals as opposed to writing for a mass audience.
    • You will need to get into the nitty-gritty of some topics and acquire in-depth knowledge in order to help your target audience make an informed decisions
    • Be direct and straight to the point with your communication. Professionals and businesses prefer to dive straight into the main topic without beating around the bush.
    • B2B communication includes writing for LinkedIn, writing a newsletter, emails, direct messages, etc.
  • Writing for B2C
    B2C involves writing for consumers and helping them make the decision to purchase the product or services that your client provides. As the target audience is different from B2B, your writing style, tonality, and language would differ too. There are some things you should keep in mind in order to create the best possible content:
    • Your content will cater to a wide audience because you won’t know who might end up reading your content.
    • B2C content can have a much lighter tone and be written in a more conversational style that your audience will feel comfortable with
    • Use emotions to appeal to the audience. Your copy should either touch their hearts or entertain them or invoke a feeling of nostalgia to persuade them to take action to take an action
    • When publishing your writing, find your audience where they’re at. B2C writing works well on channels like social media where you’ll find a large group of people that can easily share your information.

Writing Tips for Social Media Platforms

  • Writing for Instagram
    • Be mindful of your word order
      Captions are usually cut off in feeds after just a few text lines, the key point needs to come first so it’s seen
    • Consider length
      Keep it short, easy, and precise. Instagram’s recommendation is to limit your caption to 125 characters
    • Use emojis
      Using emojis, strategically placed punctuation, and even some special characters, you can grab attention and highlight parts of your content
    • Incorporate different fonts
      Helps highlight important parts of your long captions and grab audience’s attention
  • Writing for Facebook
    • Post content that interests your customers
      Provide valuable information to the reader and build a stronger relationship with a current and prospective customer.
    • Publish a variety of content
      Helps in getting more engagement
    • Use open-ended questions in the end
      Encourages dialogue between you and your audience and makes them feel included.
  • Writing for Twitter
    • Talk to people rather than at them
      Keep your tone helpful and friendly. Make your tweets personal and conversational.
    • Add your sense of humour
      Helps draw people in from various parts of the web. Ensure your humour is appropriate and professional enough.
    • Incorporate viral words
      Twitter relies heavily on viral words and phrases. Using it can help you be seen and garner engagement.
    • Add an image
      Like any other social media, Twitter too thrives on using an image, video, or a GIF with the content. It helps you grab the reader's attention and boost your post’s engagement.
    • Use trending hashtags
      Hashtags are the skeletal structure of Twitter. It can dramatically enhance your visibility on the network and helps discover and interact with other accounts.
  • Writing for LinkedIn
    • Make your titles between 40 and 49 characters long
      Titles with this length receive the greatest number of post views overall.
    • Make your posts on LinkedIn visual! Add 8 images
      Helps your post with a great number of shares, likes, comments, and views.
    • Use "How-to" and List-Style Headlines
      A headline can make or break a LinkedIn blog post. Give a gist of the main content in the headline for your target audience to read.
    • Focus on growth and self-development content
      Nothing works more on LinkedIn than a good sel-help content that can guide others or help them to relate to it.

While writing for social media, the focus should be more on creating relevance and providing entertainment and inspiration rather than hard selling your products or services to your audience. Regardless of how your product or service feel dry and boring as a subject, with humour and creativity you can change the game of your social media communication. Remember, most of the successful social media campaigns around the world are simple yet effective.

Do you want to create unique and effective social media communication for your business? Futuready Media can help you achieve your marketing goals. Connect with us us now!