8 steps to creating more engaging social media posts

Since social media is a large part of a successful digital marketing strategy, it’s important to maximise engagement with your followers in order to generate measureable ROI. But with more than 313 million monthly active users across different channels fighting to make their voices heard, how can you distinguish your company’s posts from the rest of the noise and create more engaging social media posts?

#1 Reader-focussed content

Fierce competition across Twitter means that you need to be aware of exactly what your audience is looking for. Familiarising yourself with your target audience, the things they’re searching for and the style of content that they’re interested in. This will help you to tailor your posts to make them more suitable. You can also directly address readers by giving them instructions to take a look at your latest product or find out more about something by clicking through. This call to action encourages readers to click and interact with your posts.

#2 Create mystery

Don’t give everything away in your social posts. Get your readers to ask questions. Not quite revealing everything will entice them to click through or get in touch to find out more – whether you’re holding a special offer, launching a new product, or suggesting that there’s something to find out that they want to know.

#3 Involve the reader

Putting the reader as the central focus of your post immediately involves them and draws them in. Avoid just talking about your business internally such as “We have a new product on offer”, and instead, use it to bring in your readers, for example “you might be interested in our new product”. Think of it like telling a story – your audience should always be the main character, and you should keep it short and succinct.

#4 Incentivise your audience

Through your social posts you can go further than involving your audience, to actually incentivising them. When you share information across your social platforms, demonstrate the value to your customers. Give them a reason to engage, such as sharing a blog that will teach them something.

#5 Be consistent

Consistency is key to building your brand online across social media. Customers are more likely to engage with you and comment if you are frequent with your replies and voice, then you will give a more personal impression. Personality and a face to your social media posts will help to increase audience engagement.

#6 Second person and direct address

Again, using pronouns such as “you” and “yours” generally increases the overall engagement of a post. Directly addressing your audience in the second person means that you connect immediately with you audience. A great way to increase this even more is to ask your audience a question.

#7 3-step post writing

Whilst you want to leave room for creativity and flexibility, when you’re not sure what to post, using a 3-step structure to your post can be very useful. For example you could use a structure which presents a problem, what the outcome of solving the problem would be, and suggest a solution. For example, “Writing engaging content can be tricky. Imagine if there was a simple way to increase your audience reach. Here are 8 steps to get started…”

#8 Simplicity is key

Keeping it short and sweet is often the best approach. Social media is all about reading concise posts, since audiences are more likely to scroll quickly through their feed. A long post will stop people from reading it, but using simple and clear language to convey a quick message is the most engaging way to write social media posts. If you want to find out more about creating engaging social media posts, give one of the Iconic team a call today on 020 7100 0726.

Author: Steve Pailthorpe – Follow us on Google+