social media and content Archives - Credible Content Writing & SEO Copywriting Blog

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.

Social media marketing these days in an integral part of business development: it is just a matter of who realize it and who don’t. Some online marketers even compare the indecision about investing in social media marketing to that initial phase when people were not sure whether they should get a telephone connection for their business or not.

But what exactly is social media marketing? It is constant interaction with your present and prospective customers and clients (on websites like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr) and not only your customers and clients but with all those people who are interested in your brand and your philosophy while not being interested in doing business with you. Why bother with people who don’t want to do business with you? Word-of-mouth marketing: they may not want to do business with you but they may know somebody who would and they would like to recommend you due to the level of familiarity you have sustained through your social media marketing effort.

Aside from regular interaction you need to post lots of content on social media and networking websites. It doesn’t do much good to your brand identity and reputation if you simply get content from other websites and blogs and keep posting it under your profile. Then you become just another user who simply wants to spend some time on Facebook and Twitter sharing “interesting stuff”. People begin to respect your opinion only when you have your own content on your website/blog. This is because expressing your thoughts and sharing your knowledge shows that you are confident and knowledgeable enough to articulate your opinions and experience openly and be open to scrutiny. This is how true interaction begins: you post links to your own content and then your friends and followers either forward that content to their own friends and followers or they expressive opinion.

So should you write content first or launch your social media campaign first? You can do one of them or you can do them together, simultaneously, it depends what approach you want to follow. My personal preference would be to maintain a balance. Both the activities take time and effort, and also expense, if you’re going to hire people to write your content and manage your social media profiles. Companies and individuals that build their presence based upon their opinions and knowledge need to have lots of content in order to have a solid social media presence. You also need content if you intend to spread awareness regarding your product or service. You don’t need content much if your audience is not the reading types.