Social Media Copywriting Formulas (From An Amateur)
This week I’ve been a deranged mad scientist trying to work out the world of social media. The following article is a rough collection of thoughts on the subject; specifically on Facebook and Twitter.
It’s all very rough-draftish and it’s something I’ll come back to at a later point, but the theme of this website is “Stuff I’ve been doing business-wise,” and the stuff I’ve been doing is this.
I wrote in a previous article that you should learn about one social media platform at a time. For copywriters and fellow anti-socials, you should probably start with the least social media platforms. I’ve tried my hand at Reddit, Tumblr, internet forums and other similar places where the written word is king and you don’t have to be a quick-witted social genius to succeed.
However, sometimes you don’t have a choice. Sometimes you’ve got a business idea that requires promotion or a client asks you to provide a new service, and you’re learning on the job suddenly.
Here are my learnings thus far.
Backstory
One of my regular clients recently asked me to start writing their marketing materials for various social media platforms.
As regular readers of this site will know (and people who know me in real life will definitely know,) social media is not exactly a strong suit of mine.
In fact, I struggle with it. I’m not designed to intuitively get social media. Which is only logical; I’m a heavy introvert, which combined with other characteristics means social media isn’t for me.
Of course, I said yes to the client.
Natural tendencies shouldn’t get in the way of learning a new skill.
How to Write Social Media Posts When You Don’t Know What The Hell You’re Doing
Social media isn’t for me.
Copywriting though… I know about copywriting.
Luckily, social media, when you take out the bells and whistles, is all about copywriting.
Facebook is mostly written words. Twitter is mostly written words… and quite a limited amount of them at that. Instagram is obviously less word-based, but there are plenty of ways to use copywriting skills there as well. (Captions, quotes, hot girls and/or cats with the important stuff in the description.)
I can’t say I’m a natural social media hound, but I’m pretty good at coming up with copywriting formulas.
Here’s what I’ve done for the client so far.
Facebook is quite easy as far as applying copywriting to the media goes.
With regular Facebook posts for pages, there are no limits to words, you can add multiple pictures and whatnot. (I strongly suggest you add pictures to everything unless you have video. Messages with pictures/videos convert better across every platform in my experience.) Essentially, you can use a traditional copywriting formula (though treat your customers as pretty cold ones. They might be interested in the business, but they’re not in a mood to buy/convert.)
With the paid ads, you get a big picture and a headline, plus a little description. I haven’t worked on those yet, so I can’t say much… except you should work on your headline skills and watch what viral news sites do. They have headlines + Facebook ads down to an exact science.
Also, check out my articles on headlines for the basics:
- These Headline Writing Tricks Will Make Your Writing Better, You Richer… And Your Cat Will Love You More Too
- How To Write Search Engine Optimised Headlines
- Five FREE Resources That Will Help You With Writing Headlines
Using your headline skills can be enough for Twitter, providing you use headlines that are suited. Pose a question, use a picture, etc. However, there’s another way to do well with Twitter.
It’s a simplified version of a sales letter in and of itself:
Headline
Lead-in
Benefits
Call-to-Action.
The biggest problem you’ll have with Twitter is that the character count makes it impossible to do anything particularly well. Even so, follow the above:
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That’s one way to do it. Or, you can use multiple tweets with a single theme and reply to yourself.
Tweet One = Headline
Tweet Two = Lead In
Three = Benefits
Tweet Four = Call-To-Action
Tweet Five = P.S…
In fact, I unwittingly used that format in a very meta-copywriter fashion to create this article on creating a simple copywriting template.
Throw in a good picture and you have the basics of a Twitter formula.
P.S. A thing that I’m struggling with as far as Twitter goes is that only a certain proportion of your tweets should have a call to action. Throwing a few links to your service/website a day does work but it’s far from ideal.
When I get around to actually working out how to best use Twitter, I’m going to start by using this article on building a Twitter following by Ed Latimore. It’s a fantastic guide that you could easily apply to your own following – or a client’s business account.
Not-At-All Final Thoughts
Some people probably balk at the idea of systematising and decoding social media.
However, it’s a form of marketing, and subject to the rules of marketing… and that’s only going to become more the case as everyone abandons traditional media in favour of the cyber-world. Therefore, it’s best to learn how you can use it in marketing.
Even if you’re a grumpy non-social media guy like I am.
It’s hard to conclude this article because I’m not anywhere near knowledgeable to conclude anything yet. Instead, I’ll just ask you guys to drop your thoughts below on how you go about social media marketing!