3 minute read.
Successful social media copywriting is essential in your marketing efforts. Get your copywriting right, and you’ll attract new followers, sell your products and services, and create trust and loyalty. Get it wrong, and your brand will be perceived as inauthentic and salesy, fostering scepticism and mistrust. Here are my five tips for effective social media content creation.
1. Understand Your Audience
Before I put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard), I get to grips with who I am targeting with my copy. This information is usually provided by my clients, but sometimes I have to fill in the gaps. I conduct quantitative research to gain demographic insights such as age, gender, and location, as well as audience buying habits. I then turn to qualitative data to get under the skin of the audience and discover their likes, dislikes, and pain points.
2. Audit Existing Social Media Copywriting
Now I understand who I’m targeting the copy at, I’ll audit the brand’s existing copy. I look at the tone of voice to check for relevance and consistency. I’ll review whether they have been using relevant keywords and hashtags. Caption length is also important, as variety is key. Finally, I’ll review their call-to-actions to see if they inspire action. Once I understand how the brand’s copy is performing, I will look at their competitors. If their social media content creation is winning, there might be some tricks the brand can learn from. If they aren’t performing strongly, the brand can see which pitfalls to avoid.
Create a Tone of Voice Guide
A tone of voice guide is the backbone of copywriting and will be my guide when approaching caption writing. If there isn’t a tone of voice in place, I will query whether the business would like me to create one for them. Firstly, I look at the copy foundation, such as language preference, how they prefer to write the date, product name syntax, emoji use, and more. Once I have the basics, I move on to an internal glossary, including words that are specific to the brand or the industry. Then we get to the fun stuff: the brand’s personality. I create a list of adjectives to describe who the brand is and who the brand is not to help define this. A list of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ with some practical examples. The tone of voice guide will be useful for anyone who is tasked with digital content creation.
4. Start Writing
Now here comes the fun bit: the writing itself! Each social media caption will be different depending on the product or service that I’m promoting. Each platform has its own nuances, whether that’s caption length or the audience who is present, but broadly speaking there’s a formula that I use.
Hook: Every piece of social content creation needs a hook. This hook needs to be attention-grabbing and pique your audience’s interest. Consider it as a social media headline.
Problem and Solution: Answering a customer pain point is crucial to successful marketing, and this is the same on social media. What is the problem the audience might be experiencing, and how can the brand’s product or service be the solution?
Call to Action: This is where you add the action your audience needs to take to get the solution they need. Do they need to simply like, comment, or save the post, or click a link to access more information.
Hashtags and Keywords: Social media is being treated more and more like a search engine, so we need to ensure we’re using relevant hashtags for content to be discoverable. I research industry hashtags and ensure each social media post has bespoke hashtags included for the best chance of being discovered. I’ll also check through the social media posts to add keywords for optimisation.
5. Proof Reading and Editing
Once all the captions have been written, I will proofread and edit the copy. Once satisfied, I will send them to my client for review. I always anticipate that some small amendments will be required, and this is factored into the cost of the caption writing. Once the amendments have been made and quality checked, the final version will be sent to the business.
Helen Northern | Content Marketing and Copywriting 