Getting Copywriting Right in Social Media
“Engagement”
It’s the word that makes most businesses cringe.
We have just become used to writing in a more reader-friendly tone of voice on business websites, taking a conversational and casual approach to spelling out our offer to prospects and customers. We even figured out how to write this kind of content with SEO in mind – keywords and phrases became the topic of our ‘conversations.’
But with social media, the idea of engagement changes everything again. Instead of writing as the group making up the brand (the ‘we’), the role of copywriting becomes one of representing the personal identity of the brand (the ‘I’).
How to be interesting
Great SEO copy is essential for your website to attract leads from search engines. Using the words and phrases of your audience is (and always was) one of the ways a great SEO copywriter connects your brand with your readers. Using their words and their language helps them relate to you – to imagine using your service or product in their own lives.
But writing all about yourself, your products and your services is not engaging in a social context. It doesn’t require comment. It’s not an actual conversation.
It’s marketing.
Which is exactly where brands go wrong with social media. They end up being the one at the party who only talks about themselves and what they do.
In social media, copywriting needs to be more personal than that. It needs to act like a person and sound like a person – an interesting person.
I can hear you asking: “But what is interesting?”
Think about the way you use social media in your own life. You write a quick update consisting of a line or two about what you’re doing, you get one or two comments.
But, you’ll notice that when you ask a question or ask for help or post something you have an opinion on (that you found funny, scary, questionable, etc) suddenly your friends and family add another 15 or 20 comments. That is social ‘engagement’ – the power of one comment to spark an actual conversation of many comments.
Find your brand’s personal identity
Having an opinion means getting personal. The tricky part, though, is that being consistent with your brand copywriting is also essential. You don’t want to come across with a completely different sounding message. If your brand has a professional tone, you can’t simply be flippant in your social media.
The way to get to the core of good copywriting for social media is to identify and personify your brand’s personal identity. That is, the traits that your brand would exhibit if it took human form.
Here’s an example. Brand ABC describes its tone of voice as professional, helpful and considerate.
When I think about writing as this ABC brand, I think of an actual person – a real personality I know or can imagine that might be such a personality. Say…the assistant head teacher at a primary school. How would such a person write a Facebook update? How would she Tweet? What would he or she share? Why?
He or she would use professional language, be warm and interested in others. He or she would share topics that his or her audience cares about – that is things to do with the education of young people. He or she would respond to others in a way that feel inclusive, identifying them personally, and helping them find their way, comforting them when they needed it, and all the time considering the people that are listening.
That person doesn’t talk about himself or herself. He doesn’t brag. She doesn’t try to turn every comment into a platform or soapbox of personal gain.
He would write about others, what he has learned and how it relates to the pupils – the people that the audience cares about.
This is how you need to write as a brand in social media: be a personification of your brand identity (act like a real person), focus on others, explain what you are discovering within your niche and relate it to your followers in a way that helps them.
It’s not easy, but it sure is rewarding when you get it right.
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