8 Rules to Write Engaging Social Media Articles
Social media marketing is not easy. Even though you regularly come across different strategies while looking through the Facebook feed, you cannot even notice how hard SMM managers worked to impress you and to catch your attention. However, when it comes to promoting your own brand on social media, you face a huge number of challenges. How to write outstanding posts? How to reach a bigger audience? How to engage your visitors more? All these questions make you think that SMM is not for you.
If you have no experience in working on social media, it does not mean that you have zero changes to create content that will help to boost the popularity of your brands. Understanding of some basic rules if enough to establish your media presence, and start to work on your promotion campaign.
Know your audience
This is the first rule that you will come across in any marketing guide. Your audience is people whom you address posts and people who are interested in the ideas that you present. Many inexperienced marketers think that they will capture a bigger audience if they write for everyone. In result of such experiments, they get nothing but a couple of likes.
The matter is that segmentation of the audience is the foundation of any strategy. You need to understand the image of the person who will buy your goods, order your services, or just read your articles. There are many approaches on how to define your target market, and you need to try different of them to know what is more beneficial to your business.
When you have defined the audience, you need to develop the image of your buyer persona. You will probably agree that’s easier to write to a certain person than just to someone. You’d better note all the details, including the name, field of interests, and the main fears of this person. Basing on this analysis, you will be able to create content that will answer the questions that are important to your audience and give the information that they will share and like.
Use hashtags
Hashtags not only help other people find your content but also simplify the process of post categorization. Besides, hashtags are the perfect keywords. Thus, people who are looking for some specified content in social media, will more likely to find you. Proper usage of hashtags helps to build awareness and attract more readers.
However, nothing is so easy as adding them to your content. First of all, you should never hashtag every single idea that you use in your post. It’s always better to use just a couple of them per post, not matter how long it is. Additionally, it is better to use medium-ranked or low-ranked hashtags if you want to attract a proper audience. Thus, be very careful, and do remember that hashtags influence your social media strategy greatly.
Create a plan
If you have decided to create a prominent social media marketing strategy, you need to remember about a content plan. At this point, it does not matter what type of information you are going to publish, but you need to know when it’s better to do that.
To develop a proper plan for publications, you need to check when your posts get more views and likes. For example, Facebook allows tracking these metrics for communities. If you find a proper time for posting, you will not need to pay money for your post promotion.
Don’t be too serious
Every single business owner thinks that there is nothing funny about marketing in social media. It’s obvious that this is a highly responsible process which requires a deep understanding of the process and perfect knowledge of tools to attract the audience. However, it does not mean that the content should be serious as well.
If you are working in some extremely complicated industry, it only means that you need to spend more time to create interesting, funny, and emotional content. However, when people notice that you write in such a manner about complicated things, they will definitely like your approach. However, do remember about your target audience! Make a couple of experiments to define what they like more, and make this approach your main one in SMM strategy.
Add images
There are many researches on the effect of visual content on marketing strategies. Each of the recent ones states that the posts that contain pictures engage readers more that plain text.
The images should always be related to the text, but it does not mean that they should carry no emotions. Do remember that when you add a picture to the text, it should support your ideas and make people read it.
Make use of videos
Videos work perfectly to increase the engagement of the visitors. Of course, to get a better effect, you should add your own videos that previously appeared nowhere. However, if you have no possibility to create videos on your own, you can make use of YouTube or Vimeo resources.
Fight for quality
The high quality of the content that you publish on social media is one of the main requirements. The ideas should be fresh, the texts must be unique, and the post should contain no grammar or spelling mistakes. Thus, proofreading is an integral part of the good article, so if you want to reach a better result with your post, always double check it for mistakes.
Be persistent
Do remember that popularity in social media never comes in a couple of posts. Perhaps, your will need a couple of months to develop a strategy that will work for business. The only thing you can do at this point is to analyze the statistics, make experiments and notice how they affect the behavior of your audience, and keep working on your content persistently.
There is no magic pill that will help you create an engaging article just after reading an article. You just may find some ideas that will help you understand where to move further and how to keep working on your social media strategy. If you have some ideas on how to create better content and reach your audience – feel free to leave your comments and discuss the most effective approaches with our readers!
Lori Wade is a freelance content writer for Thriving Writer who is interested in a wide range of spheres from education and online marketing to entrepreneurship. She is also an aspiring tutor striving to bring education to another level like we all do. If you are interested in writing, you can find her on Twitter or Google+ or find her on other social media. Read and take over Lori’s useful insights!
