Social media is a fantastic way to create a conversation with your potential customers. You can put your brand in front of their eyes whilst they scroll through their feeds, so you need to make the most of this opportunity. Here’s how to make effective social media posts.
Cut Through With Clear Language
There is a lot of clutter on social media and people tend to scan through the swathes of posts. Your message can be easily missed. You might fancy yourself as a flowery wordsmith, but social media needs a more direct approach.
Keep the language clear and as simple as possible. You need to cut through the noise of people discussing their lunch and sharing videos of their cats. A concise, to-the-point status from your brand catches the eye; a five-paragraph essay full of waffle does not.
Try to inspire emotion in your readers. You could amuse them, pull their heartstrings or invoke some nostalgia, but include something that causes a reaction and keeps your brand in mind.
Make it Interesting to Look At
Because social media is a barrage of information, another way to catch the eye is to add an image or video to your post.
It’s not just about getting seen though, it’s also about your audience digesting the message. In one recent survey, only 10% of people could recall a text-based post three days after seeing it. In comparison, 65% of those who read the post coupled with a relevant image recalled what it was about.
Video is even better than that. Social media posts paired with a relevant video bring in 1,200% more shares than text and image posts combined.
Pick the Perfect Image Size
Image size is important on social media. Post a picture in the incorrect dimensions on Twitter, for example, and it won’t appear as you wish. If you make it 1920 × 1080 pixels, it will appear in timelines exactly as you intended.
Facebook and Instagram used to be rigid too, but are more forgiving now. You can post images of all sorts of different sizes, but a good tactic is to make them square on Instagram. On Facebook, you could even try to make images longer than they are wide. This way they take up more of the screen when a user views them on mobile, meaning your brand is even more prominent. The same goes for Facebook video.
Social Media Posts That Tease, Tease, Tease
Social media is a great way to bring people into your website. Whack up a link to your latest blog post or cracking offer and anyone who follows it is a step closer to becoming a customer.
However, to maximise the numbers clicking through, you need to make them feel like they can’t hit that link. You need to master the art of the tease.
Posting “Click the link to find out why you should tease content on social media” is fine, but it doesn’t snap, crackle and pop. It’s too easy for someone to dismiss unless they specifically want to know about teasing. A better post would be “Click the link to discover the single most effective tactic for making people click links”. In the first example, the reader knows pretty much what to expect, in the second example their interest is piqued and they won’t want to scroll past until they have found out what the mystery is about.
Be careful not to stray into cliched clickbait language, though. We’re all too wary of posts that over-promise, nowadays. When a tweet insists we won’t believe something it links to, we can be fairly confident we definitely will believe it. The content has to match the build-up if people are going to trust your posts.
Each to Their Own
One important thing to remember about making social media posts is that they are all different and require different tactics. The temptation is to link all of your social accounts together and write one post that goes out on all of them. It saves time, but it looks terrible.
As already mentioned, there’s a difference in the ideal image size on each network. In addition, hashtags all over Facebook posts are ineffective and ugly. Tagging people works well to increase reach, but Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all do this in different ways, so you can’t cut that corner without at least one network’s post being messy.
Some people set their Facebook or Instagram posts to immediately share with Twitter. What you actually get is a usually cut-off part of the post and then a link to the other network with no explanation. They offer no reason to click through and you can bet that people don’t.
Each network has a different purpose too. Twitter is a running stream of consciousness, which would be out of place on Facebook. Facebook is very much about quality over quantity, and Instagram is a showcase for pictures and videos first and foremost.
Let Us Make Effective Social Media Posts for You
We all have access to social media, but it takes time and effort to make effective social media posts. Let us take on the responsibility of your hands. Supportal can handle all of your social networks to maximise your interaction with potential customers and to bring new people to your site. Contact us today to discuss what we can do for you.
