It is not like social media marketing (SMM) was not applied before – with digitized 21st century, it was already one of the most reliable sources for marketing in this modern age and time. However, with every conventional mean halted, SMM became an opted avenue for businesses. Of course, this raise more awareness of SMM knowledge, included people and organizations knowing the sort of tools needed for businesses to prosper.
This also sheds light on the algorithms of social media. For competiveness and multiple reasons to follow, social platforms continue changing or let’s say, upgrading their algorithms. This sheds light on how difficult is for individuals as well as businesses to generate engagement through the posts they publish on their respective platforms. It further elaborates the constant need for marketers and social media managers to keep themselves updates with newer upgrades and how to gain maximum results out of it.
Following some writing tips can make your social media engagement pretty solid. When you start investing your money, effort and time towards your social media postings, you will get a solid return on the sort of investment you are making. If you are thinking you should not be investing your time and energy and perhaps your money on SMM, you are sadly mistaken. Safe to say that social media platforms such as Instagram are moving towards ecommerce as more and more businesses use the platform business exchanges.
This Raises the Question: Why Do We Need Good Posts and Captions on Social Media?
Good social media posts and captions allow one to generate positive influence. Such presence leads to engagement and of course, a voice throughout the social media communities and platforms as well. Here are some reasons why you need to focus on the quality of your social media posts and captions:
1. Your audience is paying attention to you
You need to keep in mind that your social media audience is waiting for an update of some sort and is waiting to hear something from you. Not having enough audience is hardly ever an issue. The issue is that whether you are posting unnecessary posts that contains the sort of content everyone is posting (unoriginal, basically) or you have poorly written captions. Addressing your posts to the right people, in the right manner is essential and this is what makes social media posting successful.
2. Reflects on what you think
Your posts need to resonate what you and your personality or you and your brand have to say. As a creator, it is important for you to think about what YOU want others to know. When there is carelessness in your attitude, there will be carelessness in your posts as well. Meticulous and good posts reflect that you care about your audience.
3. Sloppy captions have sloppy impact on your audience
If your posts are disorganized, untimely and do not have the right keywords, your audience may not get the message you are trying to convey. Despite your content being useful and creative, if it is not formatted or organized in a proper manner, you are doing a great loss for yourself.
4. Captions create your presence online
Hundreds and thousands around the country and perhaps worldwide may read your posts. If they are worthy and good, you will gain followers who would be eager for you to post again. It is always the great content that excites people and uplifts your presence.
5. Proper use of time for awareness
You need to make sure that you raise your voices on matters that actually matter. In this politically aware environment, it is important for brands and individuals to raise their voices and use their platforms on ethical matters. The respect example is brands and celebrities all over the world observing #BlackoutThursday and #BlackLivesMatter on the recent brutality in the United States of American that caused an uproar globally.
If any multinational brand or chose otherwise, they lost their audiences. Same applies to timely posting. If you choose to remain silent and only post once people have mentioned your silence, which can be counterproductive.
6. It matters to your branding and business
You need to understand that social media branding is the best marketing technique for now. Well-written posts, your logos, the hours you post on, the number of posts that you make, all these aspects matter in creating awareness of your brand.
All businesses today need a social media strategy that defines their goals. Posting on social media without a strategy can lead to waste of time and resources. Therefore, in order to be successful on social media, you need to 1) which platforms you need to use and 2) how you need to use them. Be it engaging with YouTube or/and using Instagram for your branding, you need to make sure you have a strategy for every platform you are planning to use because every platform has different requirements and ways to capture an audience. Based on your business goals, time and resources, you need to devise your action plan and strategy accordingly. These elements are crucial towards your success or failure on SMM.
Having this said, even a well-sought business plan and action plan may not be enough for you to reach to the sort of masses you want to target. It is important for you to create social media content and posts that the audience can identify you with. It makes them click the ‘follow’ or ‘order now’ option.
Now, let’s talk about how you can get the most out of SMM through captions and posts. Engagement plays a huge role in building your social media presence and we will focus on how you can increase itthrough these tips and tricks.
Start by doing some research
To make sure that the audience you want to capture notices and interacts with your posts on social media, you need to make them relevant to the certain masses you are trying to capture. The more relevance there is to your posts, the more likely you are to get successful. Taking out time to understand what your audience wants or expects from you is important. You can start this by looking into the demographic and from there you can reflect deeper into the details.
Look out for the challenges, obstacles and needs you are likely to face. Pick a challenge or need and give it the priority that it deserves. With this, you need to focus on the content and posts that address a solution that could attract the masses.
An important tip here is that in order to connect with your target audience, share the success stories of those who are satisfied by your services. This allows the masses to envision their own satisfaction and gives them the sort of heads-up they need before hiring you, or buying from you. However, you also need to ensure that the satisfied experiences are not fake. They need to be organic so people know what they are getting into.
Speak the language of your audience
Do you see yourself using baby language when talking to babies? Do you also see yourself using formal words and languages when engaging with professionals? If that is how you go about your life and business in general, why not do the same when it comes to writing captions for your posts? You need to research a bit more and understand the sort of language your clients would want to see on your posts. By language we mean that you address and communicate the challenges and needs of your audiences. You show them that you are aware of their struggles, understand them properly and are willing to work on them.
Develop an identity and your voice
While we talked about language in the above-mentioned point, it is important that the overall message you are trying to communicate resonates your own concerns and voice. The voice of your brand, or your own refers to your emotions and personality that needs to be infused in different social interactions and marketing activities you are planning to do in an online space. You need to set tone and create a voice that is original.
This is the voice that is initially influenced by the personality of the company or your own. And this is also the sort of voice that requires consistency in the content you are creating henceforth. This enables you to connect with your audience on emotional levels, build an identity and trust with your audience on the basis of your brand.
You need to be positive
We mentioned above that sloppy content leads to negative impact. At the same time, you need to reflect positivity in your posts as well. By this point, we do not mean that you need to post happy content all the time. Being happy and being positive are two different things. You need to ensure that the audience is inspired and excited by the posts that you are making.
At this point, it is also important to know that you do not need to criticize others and businesses alike. This is unprofessional and can be dangerous for your reputation as well.
Keep your posts simple and short
People do not like to read a lot on social media. If they would, they would like to open a newspaper or so. You need to value the time of individuals. You need to look into the time your audience is willing to engage on your content. If you audience is paying attention to you and your content, you need to ensure that you care about their time as well.
Here’s how you can make the most benefit of this:
- Be succinct as much as you can when you write on a topic
- Divide your content into different paragraphs
- The paragraphs need to be in two to four sentences
- Use lists, bullets and headings to make audience-friendly content; it is easy for others to scan around
- Your posts and content needs to be easy to read
- Add some emoticons
- Add some visual-friendly content
Use videos and images
We mentioned that you should add some visuals to your content. This means that you need to use videos, graphics and images. Marketing, as conventional as one may sound, plays a lot on the visuals that are presented. People look at the image first and then the caption. Visual content happens to be far more engaging, and allows the entire concept of storytelling far quicker than just words. It is a fact that video and image can alone be more engaging for you than a paragraph of words.
In particular, you should realize that videos allow you to engage with your audience in at a deeper, interactive manner. You get to talk to your audience and people love that. They engage and respond to video, can also humanize with your thoughts and it allows them to think that they know you better. This is really a win-win situation.
In this modern age, every social media platform comes with video features. Be it recorded or live, depending on your social media strategy, you can adopt these video features. If you are going for live video, make sure they are never fully unscripted. While there are high chances of vulnerability, there is also the sort of authenticity which is missing from high-quality scripted videos. In fact, it is likely that people may ignore a recorded video over a live video. Live video also allows users to think that their concerns will be answered due to the live question and answer sessions.
You also need to ensure that you optimize the visual content you are choosing for your platforms. This makes you look professional and the likelihood of people taking you seriously drastically increases as well.
It is important for you to generate instant results and feedback of your audience. At the end of the social posts and content, you should expect prompt action from the audience. Without including CTA, people won’t take any sort of action after going through your posts and content, which literally leaves you to no good. At this point, you need to understand that CTAs come serve different purposes and come in various forms as well. For instance, with these different CTAs, you can encourage your audience to take multiple actions:
- Redirect them to your other engaged social media platforms and channels
- Encourage them to subscribe to your other platforms or newsletter
- Redirect them to your particular website
- Direct to a landing page
- Point them towards another content
- Ask them questions regarding the content so they can apply in the comments
- Encourage them to share and like and comment on the posts
- Take their feedback
Social media content writing plays a huge role in success and failures of businesses in the modern 2020. The competition you are currently facing to get the attention and time of your audience is fierce. You need to keep in mind that more than competing, you need to be different from the normal; you need to set yourself apart from the competitors and share and make content that is not what everyone else is doing. Being difference never goes out of style.
Bond with your audience through your content. Ensure them that you are doing and creating everything that addresses the needs and wants of the audience. Always conduct your own research and get to know who you are trying to capture, be aware of their wants and needs. Speak their language, use their language.
These are some key points you need to keep in mind when making content and posts for social media. Apply them and you will see changes in your business approach and results.
About the Author
Vitalii Anufriiev is a CMO and writer at the Write Me a Speech company. Vitalli likes to write different matters, including strategy planning and marketing. He also manages social media at the WritingMetier.
