For almost two decades already, social media has been gaining importance non-stop. What originally emerged as a tool for simple social contact recovery with long-lost friends and relatives, very soon discovered its vast potential as a very powerful marketing tool for individuals and businesses. Linkedin and Facebook are where employees meet their future employers, and companies attract their customers. The same is true for Instagram, Twitter, and other social media, although each has its unique features. Because of this, social media copywriting is at the peak of popularity and isn’t losing its ground.
It is crucial to master the art of social media copywriting – how to write as a guest blogger – and do it in a way that attracts many new customers to the business of interest. Here are some recommendations to consider if you want to learn about effective social media copywriting. Make the first step.
Although copywriting’s central notion is familiar to almost everybody, its true meaning is not obvious. It is not merely giving a description of your goods or services, but persuasive writing to transform your passive readers into active supporters – not haters. Not an easy task to conquer now, is it? Not even a clue what to start with?
A Chinese proverb goes as follows: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Sometimes the most challenging thing is taking that first step. A common “nightmare” among many professional writers is sitting with a blank paper or a text file and not knowing what the first sentence should be.
Know Your Customer.
Social media platforms like Facebook are somewhat similar to a loud market, with many people chattering at once. In order to not spend your resources in vain but direct them at a receptive audience, you either have to cry out even louder (hardly an effective tactic!) or “hit” them with what really makes their hearts beat.
First of all, whom exactly are you addressing? In each company’s case, there may be dozens of different stakeholder groups to deal with: clients, vendors, investors, business partners. Then there are, of course, analysts, auditors, regulators – you name it. Although not each group will necessarily read your posts on social media, the idea is still the same: you’ll need to identify the target group and find a “key” to it.
This is why emotional connection plays such an important role here. A proper psychological approach has a great deal in that. Believe it or not, it has a significant part in almost every field, which explains such widespread popularity of psychological training of different sorts nowadays.
In order to truly get in touch with the target audience, competent social media copywriting means the writer knows who they are dealing with and what this particular audience requires as an entity: what content are they looking for to receive? This doesn’t necessarily require being a certified psychologist but implies at least a little research.
Invest in Your Writing Skills.
Perfect grammar is an essential requisite, of course. Still, when it comes to social media copywriting, a dedicated writer should keep in mind many important nuances.
- Character limits for each particular social network.
- Primary purposes of each specific social network. What kind of people are you targeting, what are their interests, what do they invest their time at home, at work, during the daily commute, etc.
- Which hashtags are better to use, what tone to stick to, and whether to add emotional dimension or not.
- What writing templates are better to follow in each case.
Continuous professional development (CPD) is another vital thing. Although, not an official requirement, social media copywriters still need to maintain their awareness of what’s changing in their field and adapt correspondingly, either through online/corporate courses for professional copywriters or else.
Stick to the plan.
Advertising your products with social media, if performed effectively, can quickly become the leading way to attract new clients, more so in the field of IT. Social media marketing has to remain consistent in following a clear strategy of content marketing in order to be performed effectively. Otherwise, your business won’t be getting the full potential from what social media may offer.
What sort of plan – that will depend on each particular company and currently pursued strategy. Launching a new product line is one good example. In that case, you as a copywriter will probably be given a task to raise awareness of the product among existing customers, or on the contrary – to focus your attention on a different market segment, if the product is aimed at not the same type of clients.
Or consider dozens of other different tasks your company’s governance may have – finding new partners, M&A plans, hiring, restructuring, other important announcements, etc. As a marketer, all those things must be communicated to raise your audience’s awareness and win over their attention. Quite understandably, in each particular case, what you produce will also be very different.
From that follows the importance of communications as a type of “soft” skills of utmost importance in today’s business reality. As a copywriter, you have a task to bring the message to your company’s customers, and exactly what message it will be. That is up to the company’s governance to decide, giving you directions to follow. With that in mind, you’ll have to:
- Communicate with your managers and understand the task,
- Communicate the key message to your target audience,
- Read the results of the implemented marketing strategy and, again, communicate them to the company’s governance for it to see if any course correction is needed.
Choose your words carefully.
No matter how great the social network guest post is, it is worth nil unless it finds its way to top spots in results generated by web search engines. Please note that “choosing words” here implies quite a different meaning as compared to what we talked about earlier: it is not simply about formulating your thoughts and writing them down!
Search engine optimization (SEO) is probably the main thing mastering which you are able to direct visitors’ flow to your website and stand out among the competitors. SEO is a comprehensive internal system of measures to raise the website’s position among all other results generated by web search engines, depending on certain inquiries by the ones who perform searching.
The efficient implementation of those measures can significantly increase your website’s attendance, thus expanding your customer base. That’s why capable SEO copywriters who produce copy not only do that with strictly defined criteria, taking into account various nuances like thematic citation index (TCI) or keyword density, are so valuable and highly paid nowadays.
Put technology to good use.
Although no computer will ever write a poem as good as a talented human will, AI-assisted copywriting is gaining momentum. Just as an example, AdAge informed last year on plans of one of the world’s largest banks, Chase, to replace its copywriting professionals with AI-assisted writing tools.
But AI and machine learning are not the only technological aspects to be used for social media copywriting. Grammar checking tools are an obvious example, but there is much more.
In conclusion
Social media copywriting is more than writing text and posting it on social media platforms. Successful copywriting in today’s business world requires much more than impeccable texts with keywords and catchy phrases.
In order to really get paid for what you can do best, you’ll also have to master other related skills. Like awareness of user experience, for instance, even basics of psychology to establish a better rapport with your audience.
