Text in Social Content

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Native content formats

Whilst social media can be a central place to share or congregate around almost any kind of online activity, there are a few content formats that we call ‘native’ to social media. 

These are:

• Text
• Images
• Videos
• Stories
• Live Video
• Audio

Choosing formats

Today, the smartest marketers are adept at articulating their good ideas through lots of different formats. So you don't have to choose one at the exclusion of the others. On the contrary you should always be looking for opportunities to move between formats. 

For instance, if you have a batch of photos from an event, you could repurpose them into a video using one of the many online editing tools. You could additionally create stories, and a conversation on Twitter, in which you talk about each image in a thread of separate tweets. Each interpretation would look and work differently, and it would reach your different audience members in the places they inhabit online.

When considering formats, always play to your strengths based on your team. If you have someone internally who is a keen photographer, then images may be best for your brand. If you don’t have someone who would be a confident public speaker, maybe audio rooms aren’t ideal.

Adapting to change

A common challenge in relation to native social media formats is the fear of not looking professional or on-brand, particularly with more candid formats like stories and live broadcasts. 

But remember that marketers had to adapt over a decade ago when social media came along, requiring us to be more human, and less corporate. Similarly, these new formats are making the web an even more person-centric place again. And so we as companies must once again adapt, showing the people behind the products and allowing consumers to connect with us on a more personal level. And, if in doubt, just remember that you can always try things at low risk, because social media is a rolling content feed, where today’s post is quickly forgotten, and stories disappear after 24 hours.

Text

Let’s start with text, because that’s the original content format in social. Many sites, especially Twitter, could only accommodate text updates to start with. This was of course because of more primitive technology, slower internet connections, and in the case of Twitter a compatibility with SMS messaging – the reason for the original 140-character limit.

But even today, the art of copywriting, or writing text, for social media is just as important as it ever has been. Whilst we will talk about more innovative and visually dynamic formats, these are all accompanied by copy – video titles, story text overlays, blog headlines, and the like. And often it’s these pieces of short text that determine whether people actually click on or open the content in the first place, so it has to be good, and there’s undoubtedly an art to that.

Text best practices

Although you will almost always accompany your text with an image or video in the social feeds, it is still important to make your copy as effective, and engaging, as possible. Bear in mind that there are no hard rules for copywriting in social. For instance, overall shorter copy leads to better results, but there are some wildly successful accounts who use the text of social posts to tell the story of the visual content in great detail. It depends on what your angle is and how you’re adding value to the feed.

Let’s consider some broad guidelines for effective text.

Tell, don’t sell

Unless you are specifically promoting some unmissable offer that has intrinsic value for your audience, refrain from using sales words such as ‘check out…’, ‘join us…’, ‘visit our website…’, and so on. People will avoid anything that feels like marketing. 

Instead, tell your audience something useful, interesting, or entertaining. Make their feed a better place rather than simply filling it with more promotional noise.

Short and sweet

Most research suggests that around 100 characters are best for social media updates, but there are no hard rules here. So, if 1,000 characters are needed to do your story justice, that’s fine too.

Use emojis

Many marketers are still wary of using emojis, due to a fear of seeming juvenile or unprofessional. But, on the contrary, the various symbols and glyphs available in the emoji lexicon give us lots of ways to make copy more visually appealing through organizing, bulleting, and separating multiple points or lines within updates. So for instance we might list five things we’re excited about this week, and starting each line with a relevant emoji makes those five points clearer and easier to digest, and helps our post to stand out in the feed.

Use powerful words

Try to move from using flat, matter-of-fact language to including more evocative and emotive words in your copy. Tasty is fine. Delicious is better. New is okay. Revolutionary or innovative sounds better. 

It must be said of course that modern marketing and branding is somewhat saturated with these words, and by making everything ‘amazing’ you can start to sound like hyperbole. But, with a restrained use of these words, you will catch more eyes and get more engagement.

Relate to the audience

Write for your customer personas, which should be based on thorough audience research. Make references to their culture, use their language, and make your copy seem like it was written by them.

This is always easier if you are already like them but of course in marketing we often have to write for audiences that we don’t ourselves belong to. 

Start conversations

Not every social media update has to be a question or conversation starter, but many of your updates should invite responses in some way. 

Try and avoid open-ended irrelevant questions such as ‘how was your weekend?’ – an all-too-common social media management mistake! Instead, speak to the topics that get your audience fired up the most.

Bring in topicality

Where relevant, discuss the matters of the day, trending topics, cultural events, and the like. Topicality is consistently a huge driver of engagement, whether that’s #ThrowbackThursday, Halloween, or today’s celebrity news story. 

Be clear internally on what you will and won’t discuss publicly (such as controversial topics), so everyone’s clear on which kinds of topical events you’ll join conversations about. Use services such as Forekast to keep an eye on forthcoming notable dates in the calendar – from lunar eclipses to international cupcake day – to ensure you’re always prepared for those timely moments.