Social media is that enormous giant which is too hard to ignore. Each day, there is some new platform presented before us to create content and build a base. As it’s rightly said, what started with the thought of bringing people together has now become the connecting thread between the brands and their audience.

Devising posts that not only grab eyeballs but fetch you returns, is a learning curve which all digital marketers and writers must walk through. However, without an effective strategy, mere posts won’t do the trick.

Nail your social media strategy first, so that you can plan your posting on the basis of what you are seeking from it. As we know there is no one cookie-cutter. Every platform requires different strategies. So, spend quality time on marking your goals and defining your targets.

However, there are some tricks you must always have up your sleeve, so that you don’t land up turning the content into a tricky puzzle that leaves your audience confused.

The Social Media Style Guide
The entire landscape of social media is dynamic and highly competitive. With changes seeping into practices everyday, it’s ideal to establish a style guide for your social media content. A style guide will give a comprehensive understanding to the social media writer about your brand’s audience, the tonality, the ‘must haves’ of your messaging, write up length, the CTA formats, how users are to be acknowledged, and so on. Every little detail must be incorporated herein to maintain hygiene and homogeneity when your content goes up on social media.

Check out Hootsuite’s detailed breakdown of a social media style guide to learn how it’s done.

Mark Your Territory
Research! Research! Research! It’s a crowded place. You don’t want to end up looking like a bus they missed. Know your audience, what they want. Your job is to satiate their hunger and keep them coming for more. The possibility of which is bleak, if you don’t learn your audience, their habits, social behaviour, buying patterns, demands and so on.

Bring it to their notice that you are here to fill the gap and give them what they have been looking for.

If there are success stories to share, incorporate them into your posts. This will help create a positive mindset about your brand. Harping on the achievements, small or big, unites the brands and consumers, and makes them feel heard.

Get Your Language Right
If your target audience is a set of people who prefer regional tonality and embrace it better, you must imbibe the same while crafting the content.

Bring on board language experts who can add the human touch to a post copy while retaining your brand’s voice and communication strategy. The audience needs to feel connected to your brand, and if language doesn’t do that magic, it can push them away.
Understand the group and their dynamics.

For example, you cannot use the same tone and format for a professional space as you would, if you were addressing a bunch of students through your copy.

Wear Your Spying Gear To Know Why Consumers Unfollow A Brand
Crafting your content will get simpler once you learn to recognize the follies that other brands are making while pushing their content out there. Is it the hard-selling? The bluffing? The lengthy write-ups? The constant negativity? Lack of consistency? What drives the consumer away from a brand page when it comes to their content? This is an extremely important exercise for one to practice.

Maintain Your Tone Through Your Posts
Design your posts in an active voice versus passive. Keep your tone intact. If you constantly alter your tone while weaving your content, the end user will be thoroughly confused about your brand’s personality. Keeping it aligned with your brand voice and overall social media goals for that particular platform.

Even when it comes to influencer marketing or social causes, don’t deviate from your main voice. Collaborate with individuals and associations who get what your brand is and help you create a strong image.

Understanding your collaborators is the key to ideate and create the content for them and with them.

Example – Imagine using words which are completely out of tune for an eco-friendly village stay. A prospective traveller may not be able to catch the high-end words and moreover won’t be able to associate the language with what he’s looking for.

Don’t Dig Your Own Grave
Social media can generate a lot of negativity in a fraction of a second. Make sure your posts don’t carry highly-controversial words, for it can dim the image of your brand. Don’t tread into conflicting zones by bad mouthing about a person or a product or service. The cheap gimmick of negative publicity is something you shouldn’t opt for.

Beauty Of Brevity
Everyone is in the race to get some attention. That’s where the main fight begins. Users barely have time at their disposal. So simplify their lives. Keep the following things as a mandate, before you commence.

  • Keep it short and simple
  • Mark your CTAs
  • Be mindful about the flow of your content
  • Don’t structure heavy paragraphs
  • Keep the headline crisp and engaging
  • Make your content interactive
  • Use appropriate language
  • Craft differently for each platform
  • Pick up trending topics
  • Match your message to the destination page
  • Give statistics
  • Share user generated content

Your social posts are a huge part of your brand’s reflection. So don’t turn yourself into a social media posting machine, blindly posting anything, anywhere. Understand which platform suits your vertical, how the audience interacts on that platform and then smartly toy along with your content ideas.

Give yourself the room to learn how things operate differently on every platform.

Don’t Miss Out On The Design
A perfectly worded post is incomplete without a fitting design. Brands who tend to ignore design, take a heavy beating to things later. The colour palette, the font, the aesthetics, everything counts.

Breaking down the copy along with your design is crucial. There has to be a complete balance of both the factors, where neither overshadows the other.

One can use infographics, styled icons, solid colours, animations, and a plethora of variations to get this right.
The right design also amplifies visibility and creates shareability.

Example – A post on Instagram that may have appealed to millions, may not have the same traction on LinkedIn.

The Towering Number Of Videos
Be it Instagram Reels, Tik Tok, YouTube, Facebook Live or any other online channel for sharing video content, engaging your consumers via videos is the most booming format in the current times. This needs one to think on their feet and bring the brand to the audience.
A perfect way to create personalized content and build a strong audience base. The ideal method to deliver content that is authentic and which will reach audiences much faster over worded pieces.

Marketers and writers need to have a strong understanding of how this format can turn into their money-spinner.

So it’s safe to say, gone are the days when it took a lot of time to know about the brands. Social media content will continue to dominate the landscape with users now switching to more apps and getting extremely interactive. Now, it’s all about being here… and being social! The virtual game is where the war for the right words and attention is bound to intensify, levelling up the challenge at each front for brands and personalities.