You might find yourself here today because you’re feeling uninspired when content writing, or you may be new to the game entirely and looking for where to start. Either way, we’ve got 9 tips for you that will help deliver quality social media content.
Please bear in mind, we’re assuming you’ve already got these keystones in place:
Brand Values
Channel Strategy
Personas
If not, we’d advise you research those first and come back to this at a later date when you’re truly ready to power on with writing content.
We could go way beyond 9 tips but here are your foundations for strong social media content writing:
1. Research, research, research!
Do as much research as you can before getting started. Having as much knowledge on the subject in question as you can, will make your content stand out. You can tell when someone has put the time in to a post and when they haven’t. This will instantly elevate your content.
2. Get it all out “on paper”.
We all suffer from writer’s block from time to time. A good idea to combat this is just to keep writing, without care for mistakes, and get some ideas on paper. Now, this doesn’t have to be on paper per se but creating a content scratchpad on Google Docs is a good starting point. A content scratchpad is simply a blank document that only you have access to where you can write, edit, and delete until your heart’s content.
3. Step back or organise a brainstorm.
If you’ve tried tip #2 and aren’t getting anywhere, a good next step would be to open up your dilemma to more people. This is especially useful for campaign messaging and maybe not so useful for day-to-day social posts but if you’re part of a wider team, it’s always worth picking someone else’s brain. If you’re a solo social media manager, you may want to step back from content writing if you’re feeling in a rut – that’s always when the best ideas come.
4. Keep things simple.
Simplicity is key on social media. People shouldn’t have to work to understand the message you’re trying to get across so be ruthless in removing unnecessary words or too much jargon.
5. Write with the reader in mind.
Readers only care about what you, as a brand, can do for them. This is an important one to remember!
6. Ensure what you’re writing has a purpose.
Your content must serve a purpose somehow: is it educational to the consumer? Is it contributing to a client’s objective? Every piece of content you put out the door should be for a reason, not just for the sake of it.
7. Give your reader space.
Your content should be structured in a way that’s easy to digest. Don’t hit your readers with a big chunk of copy that’s miles long. By using nice spacing and bullet points, you allow your readers to skim and scan what you have to say but still get the gist of the message you’re trying to get across.
8. Always spell check and double check your character limits.
Grammarly is your friend! It’s a great tool for spotting any grammatical and spelling errors. You also need to be mindful of your character limits as every social media platform is different.
9. Have somebody double check your content
Have somebody look over your work with fresh eyes before publishing or sending to your client for approval. And that’s a wrap! We hope you find these tips useful. Don’t forget to bookmark this page so you can refer back to it should you ever need to. We’d also love to hear the tips that work for you when writing social media content so make sure to give us a shout on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.