BY KAREN LOTTER
Bet you never thought about it – how to write great social media content. But it is true – social media success requires strong writing skills.
We all spend so much time of our day on various social media platforms that we don’t even think about optimising our writing. Most of the time we are just communicating, and we don’t think twice about how we are doing it.
But when you do social media for business –writing effective social media content then becomes something to learn and to practice.
Write so your Tweets can be Retweeted
Social media writing is about much more than setting up a Twitter account and typing 140 characters into the box. You can do that if you like, but you will also notice six to eight months down the line that you haven’t built much of an audience.
What you need to do is write so that your tweets can be retweeted and that people want to hear what you say. Link clicks are by far the biggest way users interact with content, accounting for 92% of all user interaction with Tweets.
On Facebook you want to get your comments liked and shared, as well as on LinkedIn.
Rule of Thirds
For great, sustainable social media content keep in mind the “rule of thirds”.
Spend…
- A third of the time promoting yourself, talking about your product, service and what you have to offer and posting your blog posts;
- A third of the time talking about your industry, retweeting and sharing other people’s content, giving peers a boost and a shout-out;
- A third of the time answering people’s questions and doing general admin tasks.
So let us take a few notes from the experts. Ben Sailer on CoSchedule Blog says: “Social media copywriting requires some unique skills. You need to be able to cram as much value into as few words as possible. You also have to be consistent and engaging at all times.”
And Danny Wong, posting on Shareaholic, cites Marcus Cordero: “It starts with having a purpose beyond pushing your brand”. Show your readers you’re not only an expert but that you care about them.
Sustainable social media content demands that you talk with people, not to them. And remember, tweets that contained more adverbs and verbs have a higher click-through rate than tweets with more nouns and adjectives.
About the Author
Karen Lotter is a journalist and writer. She also runs a company specializing in creating websites, writing creative and interesting content and optimizing sites for search engines.
She has written profiles, features, advertising copy, obituaries, press releases, and columns in magazines, company newsletters and newspapers, and written and produced corporate scripts.
Since she stopped writing political speeches (after 13 years in the trenches), she has focused on writing for the web and presenting workshops on communications-related issues.
Karen tutors the Writing for the Web Course at the Writers College.
