Last week I presented to a group about the importance of developing a social media strategy for your business. I told my audience the reasons why I think it is a good idea and totally stand by what I said.

One of the areas I covered was about the importance of developing quality content for your social media, some find it is easy, others though do find it a challenge.

 

Here are some top tips to improve your content writing to enable it to be readable and shareable.

 

 

 

  • Get a killer hook!

Creating a strong hook is very important, you may have as little as 2 seconds to engage an audience or they will stop reading (are you still with me?)  If they are not reading, they won’t be engaging, commenting or subscribing to your feed, so what can you do?

Go wild with your headline and make your first paragraph a strong selling point, don’t get off topic from the beginning but grab their attention. Think of your first paragraph as your advert for the rest of the blog.

  • Study other content writers

Always be aware of what is going on around you within your industry and beyond. Read, read, read. There are lots of tools around us now to help curate and save content to allow us the right time to take things in. Use these tools, save an article you find of interest or are potentially interesting to your customer base and take some time to read and absorb them.* Use your social media platforms to follow those who inspire you and see if you can apply any of their winning techniques to your writing.

  • Make SEO your friend

Learn how to get the most out of your content using SEO best practices. Create subheads, use keywords and add useful links to onward reading and, of course, back to your own sites. SEO thrives on new content, so keep the momentum going for your blog and web content, as well as the content you develop for your social media platforms. Developing a strategy and sticking to it allows you the time to be creative then share it across all of your platforms to develop a string SEO pull for the topic area.

  • Find YOUR voice

Competition is strong and it can be hard to be heard. Personalising your content could be a way to make a difference to the next person and could resonate with a different audience. Write from the heart and invest in your content to make it unique to you. Identify your own writing style and use this strengthen with your followers. It is all about being social, you know, which we sometimes forget!

  • Research

Finally, consider your topic areas and read around the subject. Has it all been said or can you find a different angle or approach? Most people aren’t looking for very deep and meaningful content in the main, so as long as you have a good handle on the facts and feel you can add to the party then go for it and of course, share your sources and research at the end of your content for those who do want to know more.

Hope this has been of interest, writing content shouldn’t be a chore, if you love your subject you will always find something to say about it!

If you want to know more about social media strategy planning or social media content, then please do get in touch at [email protected]

*Useful tools:

  • Pocket is a fab website where you can park article for when you need them.
  • Storify is the easiest way to find, collect, and share what people are saying all over the web. The main purpose of Storify is to allow users to create stories by importing content from various forms of media into a timeline, then drag that content into their own Storify story timelines.