There was a time when most of the small or mid-level Indian companies where mistaking social media as another platform to drive traffic to their website. But 2014 is going to be a milestone in the Indian digital market scenario. Small and mid-level companies are moving to professional agencies to handle their social media marketing for them. These companies are now understanding the importance of social media, as it gives them a multipurpose media platform to fulfil their marketing, branding, CRM and sales activities. Everybody wants to get on to the bandwagon of Social Media Marketing to get maximum likes on their pages, post likes, post comments and shares. The customer is more focused on spreading word of mouth marketing rather than the number of likes or followers on their social profiles and pages.
With this in mind, it’s certainly time to start taking Social Media Marketing more seriously. The following copywriting tips are worth remembering when using any social media platform:
1. Be straight, but a little mysterious.
The force multiplier is an effective social media copywriting process. In summary:
a) Get to the point immediately,
b) have something new (and useful) to say and
c) don’t say too much too fast. Be a little mysterious.
Give your followers a human touch in your copy by starting sentences with words like “I”, “We”, etc. or tell a good story or inspire your user to share their experience by showing that you’re just like them.
If you want people to click on your link or you want to write sale-centric content then get back to basics. Just get straight to the point. People who read your story don’t like a story end at “Click Here”.
2. Get back to basics
We are in the business of helping customers:
• believing there is a better way
• realizing they just found it (on your blog) and
• ACTING—taking a first step toward what they want (giving you a lead)
Infographic or video content that makes customers respond does one thing really well:
Answers questions in ways that makes potential buyers think, “Yes, yes, YES … I can take action on that. That will probably create results for me. Now, how can I get my hands on more of those kinds of insights/tips?
This is the key to using a social media to create more engagement and leads to sell. Make it your goal.
Once you take this simple idea and turn it into a habit you will start generating more leads. Ask yourself, today, “Am I giving the reader/viewer enough reason to comment on my Facebook update?”
3. Focus everything you’ve got on headlines
The world has been reduced to headlines. Period. Effective headlines get right to the point—appeal to emotional and tangible desires of prospects in ways they cannot resist acting on.
4. Make readers crave more of your content
Effective content makes followers hungry for more content. Every piece of content you write should make readers crave more. Take each social media tidbit, article, blog post, update and ask yourself, “Did what I just say make the reader want to hear more?” This is one of my best social media copywriting tips.
5. Use active sentences
The way you write on social media sites is so important. Remember that the goal is to spark interest and enhance engagement. If you’re sending a tweet, or updating your status, you want to write something that will improve your Click through Rate. So be sure to always use active sentences containing strong action verbs. For example, “Google recommends +1s” rather than “+1s are recommended by Google”. Active sentences are those where the subject (Google) performs the action of the verb (Recommend). Always look to use powerful verbs rather than words like, ‘are’, ‘is’ or ‘am’.
6. Be creative
As mentioned above, it’s important to focus on getting the user to click on a link, or to look at something you have shared or liked. One way of doing this is to be more creative with your posts or updates. For example, instead of tweeting, “Here is a list of copywriting tips for social media”, you could create excitement and suspense by saying, “For tips on improving your copywriting for social media, follow this link”, or “Are you looking for copywriting tips for your social media campaigns? Here are the tips you need”.
7. Give it a break
Giving a break does not stand for don’t post anything on your social profiles. The regularity is so important. But as well as only writing around your product can become a boring social media strategy. So we can give a break to that content strategy by putting some emotional topics like reminding our user some childhood moments by sharing your targeted users’ childhood cartoon characters or video game. And never miss to write immediately about the current affair or breaking news with some twist. (Just keep in mind that will your brand image allow you to post about that particular topic?).
8. Enjoy it!
The whole point of social media is to actively engage with others in a slightly less formal way. This is why for anyone tweeting regularly, or commenting on an interesting topic, it’s important to enjoy the experience and not hard sell or put people off from interacting with you. Potential customers and clients would rather take time to talk and engage with a brand that is enjoying the company of others, rather than abruptly trying to push their products or services onto them.
Above anything else, it’s important for anyone engaging with social media to have fun with it. This will show in the way you write. It shouldn’t be perceived as a burden, but rather an integral part of online marketing. The above mentioned social media copywriting tips can be used by anyone straightaway.
If you have anymore that you would like to share, please do so below. I’ll be interested in hearing your thoughts.
