Five writing tips for social media channels
Writing is an essential part of branding strategy. With it, we can get closer to our target audience, also on social networks. Hence, there are copywriters, focused on advertising and marketing: it is not the same to sell "ecological toys" as to advertise a doll saying that "his eyes glow in the dark." The first is good if we want to attract the attention of responsible parents, but not if we want to convince their children. As far as I remember, when I was little I cried because my Pinocchio figure "was not a real boy", never because it was not made one hundred percent of cedarwood.
Jokes aside, every business needs a professional with this specialty. Although this is one of the services that I provide at Strategic Studio, I know that it will not always be possible for you to count on us. Many times you will have to communicate with your customers, especially in those large windows that are Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. That is why we have decided to anticipate the problem.
Here are five tips for writing on social media:
1. Think about how your brand is expressed. Depending on your identity and target, you will be expected to use one vocabulary or another. Can you imagine what would happen if, at the end of the summer, they tried to sell you death insurance for your child, referring to the dangers of “going back to school”? In this case, the key is that, from the values that you usually include in the briefings, you make lists of suitable words and others of forbidden words. Thus, when you shape your message, you will put aside your own resources and use those that define your company.
2. Avoid pretentious terms. Language is one of the many things that unites us with the client or buyer and, if they do not understand us, it is impossible for them to pay attention to us. Reserve the technical and sophisticated for those who demand it and, even so, try not to overdo it.
3. Make sure you write correctly. Nothing causes worse feelings than misspellings and word repetitions. Do not hesitate to consult the websites of Fundeu or RAE and, in case you want to enrich your style, the synonyms for Similar Ideas. If words are the copywriter's tool, the dictionary is his repair shop.
4. Adapt to the context. It is all about preparing short, concise texts that capture the attention of the visitor and that do not require further analysis. I mean, just the opposite of what we do on a blog! People connect to the Internet with the idea of "surfing", not "diving", and furthermore, scrolling texts have always been the enemy. While on Twitter we must avoid exceeding 100 characters and on Instagram 125, on Facebook it is advisable to keep around 145 characters: a headline of 25, a body of 90, and a description of the link that does not exceed 30. Images and hashtags are essential.
5. Read aloud. It is the best way to evaluate yourself. It will help you to detect errors and inconsistencies and to work the rhythms. A text in which all the sentences have the same number of words is generally monotonous and boring. Try mixing long and short phrases, just as if you were composing a melody.
These tips are not the only ones that I want to share with you, but they are the most useful for a first contact with copywriting. I hope that you will put them into practice very soon and, above all, that you take into account the great secret of this work: Writing is not like riding, swimming, or riding a bicycle. You have to practice and have respect for it or, otherwise, even specialists can return to floats and side wheels.
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