Writing for social media takes talent, creativity, focus, and a deep understanding of your audience. Here are a few tips to help you get started.

If you invest time, effort, and money into posting on social media, I’m sure you want to get a good return on your investment. That return should see you meeting, or exceeding, the goals you’ve identified for each platform – but if you post without a social media strategy, which outlines how each platform will help you accomplish your business goals, many of your efforts will be wasted.

Having a social media strategy and action plan, based on your unique business goals, resources, and available time, is essential to your success.

Yet even with a well laid out action plan, you still need to create social media posts and content that speak to your identified audience and inspire them to take action.

Great content can help you start inspiring conversations, build engaged communities, create buzz around your brand, and even directly influence sales.

I’ll share social media content writing tips that will help you to create unique content for your social media platform.

1- Do your research

If you want your audience to notice and engage with your social posts, you need to make them highly relevant to your target group.

The more relevant your posts are, the more success you will have – but relevance, in general, is not enough. You need to take the time to truly understand your audience. Start with the general demographic information and then go deeper.

What needs, obstacles, or challenges do they have? Pick a need or challenge that might be a high priority for them right now, then develop content and social media posts which provide them with a solution.

2- Speak the language of social media:

This, of course, means different things on different platforms.

Wondering what that looks like, exactly, on Hootsuite’s own social media channels? “LinkedIn, for example, is a space for working professionals, so we prioritize educational and thought leadership content on the platform. Our audience on TikTok is more casual, so we give them videos that speak to the fun and authentic side of our brand.”

Take your research further and learn what language your ideal clients use to communicate their needs or challenges. Use this language when writing your posts to ensure your content resonates with your audience. This will help to show them that you truly understand them and their challenges.

3- Develop your voice:

Although you should write social media posts in the language of your target audience, the overall message should be written in your own voice.

Your voice (or your brand voice) refers to the personality and emotion infused into all your marketing activities and social interactions online – you create that voice with the language and tone you use when writing your content or interacting with your audience.

This voice is primarily influenced by your or your company’s personality – your ‘why’ story and the language used by your ideal customers.

This voice needs to be consistent throughout the content you create and the posts you share on social platforms, as well as any engagement you have on those networks.

This consistency will help your audience connect with you emotionally, as well as build trust, and identify your social media posts as yours.

4- Be positive:

This doesn’t mean every post needs to be happy – there’s a huge difference between positive and happy. You want your audience to be excited, and inspired by your posts, and that doesn’t always mean happy posts.

In some of your posts, you may choose to share your opinion or take a stand on something important to you and your brand. But there’s a difference between taking a stand and attacking or criticizing others.

A lot of schoolyard-style bullying happens on social media. Don’t engage with it.

Whatever you do, avoid criticizing anyone (or any business) publicly. Criticizing others is not only unprofessional but also dangerous – it can draw more negative people to your page and can hurt any trust or credibility you’ve built with your existing followers.

Learn more about: Social Media Content