Best Practices for Writing on Social Media

Blogging, Tweeting, Posting and Pinning. Social Media is a huge undertaking and critical for businesses large and small to engage with their audience, showcase business services and products, and, in the end, create brand awareness. Writing posts and tweets may sound fairly simple but it should be a carefully planned marketing strategy in order to take it from “yet another company trying to market on the web” to a well-thought-out strategy that will turn viewers into consumers. Let’s review some of the Best Practices used by Social Media Experts for blogging, and posting on all social media platforms.

• Know your Audience – First and foremost know who you are trying to reach on your social media platforms. Use analytics to find out your target audience since each social media platform has a different demographic that uses it.
• Know your Goal – Every social media expert will tell you that knowing your goal is imperative. Are you writing/posting to sell products, introduce new services, entertain, engage your audience, or inform? Knowing this will help your social media campaign be focused.
• Keep Posts Short – The average consumer does not have very long to read a lengthy article especially since many people are viewing via a mobile device while on-the-go. If they want to read further they can follow a link to your site. In fact many social media platforms such as Twitter limit messages to 140 characters. Facebook allows you to share larger posts, but again, it isn’t wise to bother your readers here, and make them click the “see more” button all the time.
• Be Human – When writing posts use a voice that is not just professional but friendly, approachable, and if possible, conversational. Posts, blogs and tweets should be able to not only give information about your company, product or service but show the human side of your company as well.
• No Hard Sells – Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels are meant to be fun so avoid hard selling your services/products. Post things that are interesting and uses imagery to attract viewers. Hard selling can cause viewers to tune out and become disinterested.
  Proofread – Social media is riddled with typos, spelling errors and grammatical issues. Try to avoid these problems by editing and having proofreaders look over each post to be sure that it is written well and puts forth the ideals of your brand.

Categorised in: Blog, Social Media