Copywriting Tips for Social Media Profiles
Although some may still confuse as to how to succeed in this particular area, this post will give you solid copywriting tips for social media profiles and bios.
Writing for social media is similar to writing for any other marketing channel. You need to be clear on your audience, your brand voice, and your objective. And because of the way people consume social content, these things are even more vital on social media.
A lot of us have social media on our phones and we scroll through everything half-distracted, not even registering half of what’s there. When you write for social, you’re writing for these casual scrollers and skimmers, not highly engaged readers.
If there is one thing you need to always remember to have great copywriting, it’s to always write with your readers in mind. What attracts these mindless scrollers is a post that’s about them and that addresses their problems, their needs, and their desires.
When you’re planning your content, keep in mind that the focus of your businesses’ social activity shouldn’t be your business, it should be your customers.
Writing on social media tends to be more casual compared to other sorts of business communication. That’s mainly because people use social media to connect with friends, to socialize, to catch up on news, and for other non-work-related things. So naturally, a more informal, less business-like tone is expected and appropriate.
Space is a premium on social media. For your message to be effective, you to get it across quickly. Using abbreviations and breaking a few grammar rules are acceptable and useful to achieve this.
When choosing how casual to go on social is to determine your brand tone of voice. Your brand voice should be consistent and recognizable across all your marketing channels. Choose the right language to reflect your brand to achieve that.
You need to have clear objectives so your social media copywriting will be successful. When it comes to your social media activity, you probably have several objectives and targets around engagement levels, click-throughs, and conversions. Assuming that the overall strategy is clear, the next thing to make sure of is to have a simply defined objective for each post. Your objective will probably be linked to a call-to-action, but not necessarily. Sometimes the objective of a post is just to make followers aware of something or remind them of a key message.
Here’s the important thing: a post should only ever have one call-to-action. Remember those skimmers and scrollers? And the limited time and space you have to get your message across? Unless you are absolutely clear what one action you want your reader to take after reading your post, your message will come across as confusing and will probably be ignored.
Important points to remember to have a solid foundation for social media success:
- Know your audience
- Use a more casual language as appropriate for your brand
- Stick to one simple CTA per post.
How to Write Social Media Profiles and Bios
Bios are the snippets of text you see when you click through a social profile. They’re important because they will be the first impression that people will get of your brand. that’s why you need them to be accurate and engaging.
Start Strong with your Social Profile Name
If your brand is very well-known, like Apple, or has a name that describes what it does or sells, like Carpet Warehouse, then you’ll want to stick to using just your company name here. However, if your company name does not describe what your company is or is not as well-known, being able to add a more descriptive word to your name on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, can make you more quickly discoverable by people who are searching for both your company and your product or service.
Get to the Point
On Twitter and Instagram, the text needs to be very short. In that short space, you need to engage your target audience and persuade them to take action. So you need to be organized about it, you don’t need any fluffs or fillers here.
If you are struggling to perfect your company social media bio, try starting with this simple tried and tested formula.
- Start by saying who you help and how you help them. Notice that we’re focusing on the reader here and not ourselves.
- Explain what makes you unique. How are you different from other companies in your field?
- Offer some proof, something that builds your credibility. This could be a membership of a professional body, it could be an award you’ve won or an impressive statistic, like the number of years you’ve been in business or the number of customers you’ve served.
- End with a CTA and attach a benefit to it. Give your reader a great reason why they want to take the action that you’re proposing.
Banish Bloat
On Facebook and Linkedin, the character limit for your bio is longer, but that doesn’t mean you should use all of them. I strongly advise you not to. Banishing bloat and keeping all your social media bios to the simple formula shown above will make your message clearer and your CTA more persuasive than if you try to stuff in too much information this early in your relationship with your reader.
For more posts like this, check out our blog.
