8 Things You Really Should Know About Writing for Social Media

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Whether you are a social media marketer responsible for brand promotion, an independent artisan offering really cool stuff, or just a common netizen craving likes and reposts, you should remember and keep in mind what you learnt in language classes at secondary school. Not at college and university.

Higher educational institutions mostly teach us to express our rational selves in academic style. It allows and requires you to make your writing as exhaustive as possible. It limits the appropriate number of words to a few thousands. And it encourages you to try to sound smarter than all mere mortals walking outside the walls of your alma mater.

Social media welcome none of that.

Despite their inspiring openness, functionality, and tolerance to self-advertising, social media are getting more and more picky nowadays. That’s why both a reputable brand and a small aspiring business will choose to hire content or ghost essay writers online or from an agency in order to introduce their products or services on media in the most effective way.

Yes, text in a social media post is important. Unless it’s a photo with the Eiffel Tower from your vocation in Paris. Well, the Eiffel Tower on it speaks for itself. But still, a short and witty description even for such photo will surely bring you likes from your subscribers.

So, you’d better not listen to those who put on a tragic face and are like: “Oh, people have quitted reading nowadays. Where is this world going?”

People do read! The point is that they are offered too much to read, starting from numerous non-fictions about motivation and finishing with friends’ posts on Twitter.

Apparently, it’s getting incredibly hard to catch their wandering attention and convince them that your posts are worth it. Remember that when you are scrolling down the news feed, it takes you just a few seconds to decide what you want to learn more about.

There is the whole science (though no particular theory) behind the principles of Internet users’ decision-making process. So, let’s make out what you need to get more netizens to like what you write for social media, whatever it is.

1. Read a Lot. Read Different

This is the very first rule you should stick to if you work with texts on a daily basis. Even if you are a content manager and your main duty is to control the quality and smoothness of your team’s performance, reading is a must for you.

The more you read, the better you understand the nature of writing, and hence, the better you write. But make sure that you mix genres, don’t limit yourself to classic novels or non-fiction only. A professional copywriter will recommend you even looking through advertising slogans and make a separate document where you could save the ones you find simply awesome.

Variety is what broadens your horizons and gives you long-lasting inspiration. And that is essential not only in terms of writing.

2. Grab a Dictionary and Grammar Book

Agree that we, native speakers, neglect to check if some noun can be accompanied by some verb so that the couple look really nice together. Yes, sometimes such random word combinations appear just stunning and attract readers with their weird originality. But mostly they threat to make your text too abstruse and pretentious. People don’t like that.

If long reads are your cup of tea, correct punctuation may be your pressure point. So, find a good punctuation guide and make it your reference book. And yes, it must be a book, a real one, approved by one of such gurus as Oxford, Cambridge, or Harvard (these are for the English language only, of course).

The thing is that today a copywriter and blogger may become a language trendsetter on the Internet unintentionally (or even intentionally). It’s one thing when you coin a funny new word that your readers find cool and start using in their conversation. But it’s a completely different thing when you happen to violate language norms.

3. Make It Short. Or Long but Enticing

If you are one of those social media users who prefer to share emotions or impressions in text pieces and not in memes, you might have noticed that your shorter posts get more likes than longer ones. (And if your long posts get those likes not only from your nearest and dearest, who just love you and everything you write, but also from people whom you met just once in your life, then you are almost a king of content!)

Again, the gist is not that people don’t like to read a lot. It just takes their brains less efforts to get an idea from one masterfully written sentence than from ten sentences, though written equally well. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that most netizens will never want to click on “Read more”.

Add a hook into the first few sentences of your long-read. Make the first ten-fifteen words of your post tempting but try your best to keep the same vibe in the rest of the text. If you do it right, even a lengthy post will be read to the very last full stop.

4. Structure It Creatively

It’s especially helpful in longer posts. For example, you can turn every single sentence in a separate paragraph by starting each sentence from a new line.

Firstly, such texts look easier to read. Secondly, they get really more readable. If you choose to stick to such technique, it will encourage you to parcel up long complex and compound sentences into short simple ones. Thus, you’ll even add some dynamics to the content. And readers will appreciate it.

5. Write What You Say

Because on a daily basis neither you nor 95% of people ever say something like: “Due to the fact that a manufacturing company invested in the import of materials, its products have met the quality standards and are now going to meet the expectations of the company’s client.” The rest 5% who might be able to speak it out on one breath are either news hosts or people who shouldn’t be allowed to write until they stop speaking like that.

Have you ever listened to TED speakers? They are perfect orators, aren’t they? That’s the way you should write for social media. Leave pathos and metaphors to fiction. Imagine that you are telling your story to TED audience. And then write it in the same way.

6. Consider the Publishing Time

Believe it or not, it’s different for different social media. According to recent studies, Monday and Friday, for example, appear the least successful days for posting. Of course, it doesn’t mean that if you share your story on, say, Friday, it won’t be liked and shared at all. It will be.

But if you want to instantly attract more people and save your precious post from getting lost in the news feed, then you’d better consider the time and date of bringing it to the choosy online world.

On Hubspot you can find a helpful infographic to schedule your posts more effectively.

7. Promote Your Ideas. Not Yourself

Before you get to writing, make yourself think what you want to tell people and why you want them to know it.

Why should they know how you’ve upgraded your own product or what color the sky is in your neighborhood? Even if you just want to entertain an audience with a funny story about your cat, you should realize that, yes, entertaining people is your goal. That’s okay. That’s incomparably better than something like “I just have nothing to do, so I decided to write a post”.

8. Keep Calm and Keep Writing

The simple truth. The only truth. You can master writing for social media only by writing for social media regularly. Only by tasting the sweetness of success and the bitterness of failure will you comprehend how to make the online community like you and share you.

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