Writing content in the age of social media

Writing for social media

Frankly whenever I write about social media deep inside my heart I know that I’m actually talking about social networking. You see, social media would be something like YouTube or even a blog publishing platform like Tumblr because it is media content prepared by people.

So the actual topic of this blog post would be “Writing content in the age of social networking” because it means writing content mostly for social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – there is a difference. But since people mostly use “social media” even for the just-mentioned social networking websites, I have created the topic using the more popular term. With this out of the way, I’m feeling much relaxed.

Writing content for social media is a bit different than writing content for your own website or blog.

Social media thrives on buzz. This is because there is too much of it. On an average an update doesn’t stay in front of your audience even for a few minutes unless you pay to promote your updates. There are only three ways you can grab attention:

  • By frequently posting new updates (content)
  • By posting interactive content (conducting polls, surveys or seeding interesting discussions)
  • By paying money

Frequently posting content on social media

In order to remain visible as much time as possible you need to post multiple times, but make sure you don’t end up creating meaningless clutter. If you post too much content without providing value your updates become like white-noise – people stop noticing them. Remain relevant. Provide compelling content. Post a mixture of images, videos, text and links.

Since I’m a content writer I’ll focus on the writing part…how do you write for social media? It goes without saying that you create shorter updates. If you are posting on Twitter keep the scope for retweets and create your posts accordingly. Use direct words that are to the point. Make sure that your content writing for social media has the following attributes:

  • Relevant, useful and interesting
  • Easy to understand and easy to share
  • Conversational and engaging
  • Encourages people to act (Like, Retweet, Respond, Share or comment)
  • Relevant to audience interest, time and to an extent, geography
  • Useful and interesting

Your content doesn’t always have to be original. You can curate content from other sources, but make sure you regularly post some unique content from your own website. For instance, if I want to promote my content writing services on social media I can go on posting useful and informative content writing tips from other websites but in between I should also post content from my own blog because ultimately I want to generate traffic for my own website rather than constantly sending it to other websites.

Posting interactive content on social media

What exactly is interactive content?

Instead of posting useful information you hold conversations with your audience. This way you keep them engaged and the more they engage with you, the better they remember you. You can keep asking them questions. You can seek their opinion. You can hold surveys and polls. You can even hold contests although this is discouraged by Facebook if you specifically hold them to garner “Likes”.

The basic thing to keep in mind while writing content for social media is engagement. You need to constantly engage your audience by remaining in front of it. For this you need to be useful, relevant, compelling and of course, regular.

Leave a Reply