02 Jul How to Write Good: Social Media Content (Dear Community Manager, You’re Doing It Wrong…)
Inspired by Jon Thomas’s Social Media Tips to Ignore post (particularly #4), a public service announcement for brands was in order. Some of the top marketers in social media are complaining of declining organic growth on Facebook, lost reach, and the need to constantly buy ads to stay ahead of the game. I’ll leave my thoughts on the Facebook business model debate out of this post and instead, focus on how too many brands are ruining the small chance they have at organic growth & engagement with the social media content they’re publishing.
Two years ago, (yes, two years! That’s like a century in social media time…) Buddy Media released a whitepaper, Strategies for Effective Facebook Wall Posts, followed shortly after by Strategies for Effective Tweeting. These are both good reads with insightful data, but I’m more than a little concerned that too many community managers are treating the best practices listed in these whitepapers as if they are the secret formula to good content.
[Like OR Comment OR Share OR Click OR Retweet OR Reply] if ______ ________ ______ {Insert link and/or massive, bright, organic looking image here}
Example:
News Flash: Formulas For Social Media Marketing Content Don’t Work!
Connecting with people does.
Do you walk around in real life talking like that? Do you post to your own Facebook or Twitter account based on a formula?
Another example:
Social media gives brands the opportunity to be human and to connect with customers on an emotional level. Studies like these whitepapers have their place, which is to provide social media marketers with sound insights that should give readers a good jumping off point.
For example, you’ll find data from Buddy Media showing certain hours during the day and certain days of the week that have proved to be peak engagement times for certain verticals. So, maybe you start by posting during those times. But if you never post at a different time of day, you’ll never know what actually works for your unique fan base.
This also applies to content writing. They found that, on average, tweets that contain the word “Retweet” received more retweets than tweets that didn’t contain the word. But tell me, how quickly would you unfollow a brand or person that starts every single tweet with “Retweet if…” Pretty soon, you’re the boy who cried wolf and your “Retweet if…’s” are falling on deaf ears.
So read studies like the ones mentioned above, and use them as a jumping off point. But from there, you’re on your own. You have to test and learn, gather your own insights, get to know your community, and figure out what makes your audience tick.
Then, write with purpose.
Use those insights to drive your community to take action. Don’t rely on an incessant use of a short-list of call-to-action words found in a whitepaper you read two years ago. That, my friends, is how to maximize engagement through social content.
Here are a few of my favorite recent examples of content that encourages action (without a blatant CTA… cough…cough…), some from our own team of rock star community managers (working on Apothic Wine and the Jeep brand).
Help inspire others by sharing yours in the comments!
