How to write social media content that generates engagement : 20 tips you must follow
The main aim of your social media content is to earn engagement. Social media platforms are scrolling objects and a user must stop scrolling. The success of any social media content begins from the point an user or a reader stops scrolling. Social Media Platform algorithm are ever-changing and so it's very difficult to create an engaging content without adapting to the changing algorithm trends. Whatever you write must be appealing to the people. To earn engagement, a social media post must educate, excite and inspire a user.
After a week or a two, you must be able to see good number of views, clicks, shares and engagement on your social media analytics for the post.
Social media strategy
If I scroll Facebook or say Instagram, I will stop at a post that excites me. There are certain strategies that you need to apply in order to Ask the question, What is it that you stop scrolling? It is the graphics that make an user pause while scrolling. Have you ever stopped scrolling to read such a giant wall of text on a social media? I guess not. You'll only read such text if they are posted by your ex.😄
Every platform has got some specific format for posts. For different social media platforms, you will have to come up with a separate strategy. Although the social media content shares a common goal of
but you must be aware of the that a social media platform is directed towards. In Facebook, you can post your content with an image, a video or a link while twitter allows the same with a different outlook and within limit.
Here I am sharing 20 tips to create a super engaging social media content.
Keep it short but informative
Social media content is a crucial way to promote your work and attract people to it. Try to write short content. Short form content gets more engagement than long form. Depending upon the outlook, the length may vary in case of various social media platforms. In case of Facebook, the best range is 40 - 80 words. In case of social media, the attention span of users lasts for seconds. So, the first three to four words of your content are crucial. A post must be short enough to read and grasp it quickly and long enough to deliver useful information. A very long form of content is absolutely unnecessary in social medias. 2 to 5 minutes is enough. This will make your visitors think that you value their time.
Use of Appropriate Image or Video
Image is an important part of your social media content. Always use image that speaks to your audience. Using stock photos in social media is not a good idea. The better idea to use your own photos. Post that uses real photos instead of stock photos are seen to have gain more number of views and engagement. People are waiting to talk to you directly. Use relevant image and videos. Most of the social media platforms today have live video feature. An image or a video can better connect with your audience through story telling.
Live videos though look vulnerable but they are very powerful and shows your authenticity. Animated video sometimes more efficient than live videos. Life videos lack excellent background settings. Depending upon the purpose, animated videos are sometimes more efficient than live videos. Life videos do not come with high editing features but still it has the power to bring visitors to your content.
Share success stories of previous clients
You can share success stories of your previously satisfied customers. This connects your audience in an emotional level as they also envisioned such a success result or path.
Speak the language they use
You can have a deep research about the words or accent your target audience is speaking. This will push your audience to a much comfortable level and a sense of trust. So, use them at least in the body of your content.
Spark Inspiration
You can integrate inspirational or motivational quotes to your post. Especially if it is a Monday, people are sure to get influenced by such texts and take action.
Use of Emoji
If your post tone is funny, you will have to make good use of emojis. They add value to your post with playfulness. They spark in your audience feelings or emotions through visual representations of feelings.
Playfulness
Sometimes turning away a bit from the serious tone you can choose to adapt a humorous tone. It is not always good to be serious. Sometimes, a little humor or mischief is ok in case of social media content that makes your audience to laugh a bit. This will engage them to the post.
Negative Post
In a negative post, you try to highlight the possible losses or failures that your visitors may have to face for not using your service or product. Humans have a natural tendency to avoid losses. They are psychologically programmed. Try to highlight the deep mistakes already made in their industries and promise them solutions to avoid such mistakes.
Citing the benefits
Try to highlight in the beginning how your post is going to benefit your audience or what they can learn from it. This will instill a sense of responsibility for your audience on your behalf.
Psychology of numbers
Numbers work. Take for instance two headings - "5 ways to write engaging social media content" and "How to write engaging social media content?" The former sounds more convincing and compelling. People don't like to scroll un-structured text that lead them to no fruitful conclusion at all. When a number is mentioned, people expect to digest the content part by part and benefit from them.
Sense of Urgency
This is a powerful persuasion trick to instill your visitors prompt a desirable action. Headings like "Book a seat before ticket runs out" definitely impacts and will continue to impact visitors to your content.
Empathy Display
Pick out two or three pain points of your target audience. This will make them engage with your content and generate a sense of trust. They are finding a solution to their problems. By using words that directly highlights their challenges you're going to remain ahead in the competition.
Summarizing the content
Try to sum up your content in bullet points. This will attract them to your post. An user will be informed in less amount of time about the content.
Brand Voice
It is important to develop a tone such as casual. serious, professional or irreverent. This way you build trust and identity among your audience. This voice or tone must be consistent throughout your post. Tone can be helpful, funny or authoritative.
Add a call to action (CTA)
CTA will vary depending upon your purpose. After reading your content, your visitors mustn't leave directly. CTA is like the results or fruits of your content. The more number of visitors taking action shows the power of your content. CTA may be in the form of buttons like Sign-Up, Learn more, Call Now, WhatsApp, Buy Now, Book Now etc.
Audience or Persona
It's good if you mention who you are writing for in the beginning of the post. This way you'll be able to switch to your target audience faster.
Building a social media content format
After doing a research about the format and analytics of various social media platforms, you can craft customized content templates for each of them. This will save your time and chance of error will be very less because some parts will not require a change like Mission Statement or
why your business exist or why you're on social media etc.
Using Target Market Tools
There are many tools with the help of which you can narrow down your audience range to generate maximum engagement in your content. Unknown to many, Facebook has many other features as well. Facebook Audience Insights is such a tool. Another tool is Google Trends.
Hashtags
Finally before posting, the most important task is to apply relevant hashtags to your post. The hashtags allow your content to connect with more people. Instead of adding them randomly, you can create your interesting and memorable hashtags. Overuse of hashtags will not benefit you. Use not more two hashtags and they should be directly linked to your content. Nowadays lots of tools are available that help you generate effective hashtags.
Review Analytics
Depending upon your target or time frame, you must check the analytics daily, weekly or monthly. Nowadays almost each of the platforms has analytics section which come as Mobile App version as well.
Problems in Social Media
Social media has both good and bad sides. School-yard style bullying happens in social media. The best thing is to never engage or reply to such conversations. Criticizing has no existence in social media content. A single drop of criticism in any form will attract negative visitors or followers to your post or page that will destroy your existing followers. By negative followers we mean people that will use slangs and graphics to a extent that is unbearable for your original followers.
Typical audience of various social medias
You have to write a social media content keeping in mind your target audience. Also, typical audience of all the social media platforms are not equal.
Facebook
Here, you meet friends mainly from school and colleges, family members who live far from each other, relatives etc.
Instagram -
Instagram is all about colors. Young girls prefer Instagram more than anyone. Mainly for brands and product promotion and other creative services, Instagram is the preferred platform.
Twitter
Twitter is mainly for Celebrities and Politicians. Hashtags play the most role in this platform. You don't have to apply specific writing tricks to reach a fair audience in this platform.
LinkedIn
This platform is career related. Mostly you can market your skills to hire and get hired. However for product promotions LinkedIn is a good platform.
Recurring Series
You can upload posts on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. The important thing is that you must be consistent in uploading posts. Consistency shows your care towards your target audience.
Paid Promotion
The main problem in social media posts today are the paid promotion. Only for some trending hashtags the post will be viewed by a handful of people but only through paid promotion you can get the desired visitors. You can try different versions of the same post to test the impact. Multiple testing will let you know which format is getting more responses.
Conclusion
The perception of your audience about your business or brand depends upon the social media content you share. Writing a social media content is a literally technical kind of job. You must use all the resources or tools available to make your post appealing from all possible dimensions. First you can write the whole content and then you can apply or check the above tips in your content. Try to share the type of content each of these social media platforms are built for. Social media will continue to evolve and you will have to adapt accordingly. It is very essential to understand who your audience is, Where they are and what they are expecting from you.
