5 Social Media Copy Writing Tips

Trying to craft the perfect CTA? Not sure how to capture attention in a mere 140 characters? If you’re ready for your social copy to cut through the noise and stop potential customers in their scrolling tracks, this is the guide for you.

Know Your Audience

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and thought “Wow…this person just gets me”? That’s how your audience should feel when interacting with your brand. Unfortunately, many brands get so caught up in pushing their own agendas that they fail to connect with their audience at all.

The first step to connecting with your audience is learning to understand them. Study consumer insights and data like a book, pulling in any insights you can about your audience’s day to day activities, interests, motivations and pain points. This info will help you better tailor your copy to your audience, which in turn will make your copy stronger and more effective.

Test Copy Lengths by Platform

Brevity and clarity may be the name of the game when it comes to writing social copy, but don’t think your work is done if everything you write is under 50 characters–what’s more important than character count is making sure the message you’re conveying is loud and clear.

To find the best fit for your brand, experiment with copy lengths to see what resonates with your audience. Some brands can get away with longer text, while others find that short and snappy quips (or even just a singular emoji!) drive the most engagement. Study the performance of a variety of posts and let your audience inform your writing.

Write with Intention

If you want something in life, you have to ask for it. Whether it be a raise, promotion, or an extra side of guac at Chipotle (no judgement) you’ll never get what you want if you don’t speak up.

It’s the same with social media. To be truly effective, your copy has to inspire action. You can write beautiful sentences all day long, but that copy will still fail to drive results if it doesn’t inspire your audience to act. Think of it this way: compelling copy is the bait that captures your target audience’s attention, while a strong CTA is the hook that inspires action and drives results. Want your audience to click through to your website? Tell them. Want your audience to engage in your poll? Tell them. When you have mere seconds to engage with a customer, it pays to be direct.

Focus on the Customer

The most important question to ask yourself when writing social copy is “Would I click on this?”

If the answer is a hard “no”, delete everything and start over. Take a moment to consider your audience’s motivations, feelings, and desires, then try writing from their perspective. Imagine you’re a member of your target audience scrolling through Facebook: what aspects of your product or service would be most appealing to you? As a marketer, it’s your job to tap into your audience’s feelings, needs, and desires to connect and communicate with them.

Write with Focus

Write with focus—and a timer.

When the pressure’s on to write compelling, actionable copy, don’t panic. Set a timer and blurt out everything you can think of. Don’t stop. Don’t overthink. Just write.

Once time’s up, look back over your writing and begin to draw out key words and talking points that you can form into an idea. By drawing from your ideas (rather than staring at a blank page or a list of product benefits) you’re more likely to come to a new conclusion, use case, or snappy hook. You’ll also eliminate any unnecessary buzzwords or filler, which helps keep your copy concise, clear, compelling and credible.  

Great copy informs and entertains your users and grabs their attention in their newsfeed. Ready to get writing? Download our content ebook for social copy tips and more.

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