How To Write An Engaging Social Media Post

Take a scroll through your social media channel of choice, what do you see? There’s a high probability that your news feed is filled with countless, and what might seem endless, written posts, pictures, and videos. While that might bring entertainment to you as a personal user, how can you ensure your brand’s social media page stands out amongst the crowd and engages directly with your target audience?

When writing a social media post, the content you post has the power to turn your brand into a household name with the right engagement. While content can turn strangers into followers, good content turns followers into fans.

Before planning the content you’re going to post, you will need to first determine your target audience, establish your SMART goals, and choose the platforms that will help you reach them. Although every single step listed is vital to successful engagement with users on social media, at the end of the day – content is king.

What is Good Social Media Content?

When you’re scrolling through your social media pages, do you find yourself drawn to a post, even if just for a few seconds longer than other posts? Maybe to the point you left a comment on the post? That will give you an idea on what is considered a good social media post.

Good social media content offers value to your target audience, captures their attention, and engages them. Brands that have mastered the social media copywriting best practices follow one important rule – address the audience’s needs or wants. When you do your social media content writing with that rule as a guide, you’ll be able to generate content that holds a person’s attention, encourages engagement, and widens your reach.

However, it is important to not get too carried away with what you post on social media in order to generate attention and you should always manage your reach. Content should be engaging and relevant to your target audience, but it should also remain aligned to your company’s marketing goals and brand values.

How Do You Craft Good Social Media Posts?

Now that you understand what exactly defines good social media content and why it is important, how can you begin crafting these?

While each business’ page should be unique and represent the individual company, here are seven social media copywriting best practices that can help you get started:

1. Focus on Your Target Audience

There are millions of users on social media platforms, and you will not be able to write posts that are relevant for every single one of them. The good news is that you do not have to. The people you want to speak to are your target audience. Take the time to understand them – are they a professional crowd or casual? Will they respond to funny or serious posts?

Additional tip: Where possible, use words such as “you” or “your” in order to directly engage with them.

2. Be a Storyteller

Storytelling naturally evokes emotions from the reader, it is up to you to ensure that it brings out the emotions you want. The story you tell should include a brand narrative that will help social media users understand your brand and ideas, all while garnering trust. It is key to remember that you need to tell a story about your products – not just list factual information.

3. Keep it Short

Research from Meta showed that the average attention span for posts on the Facebook platform is 2 seconds. However, don’t be discouraged, 2 seconds still works if you have the right content. Still, you’ll want to ensure that your content is brief and succinct, allowing your audience to receive your key messages without taking too much of their time.

However, this might not work for all social media channels. Linkedin, for example, has seen longer-form social media content writing with more in-depth information perform better. As such, you will need to adjust accordingly.

4. Power Headlines

As mentioned, you do not have the luxury of time when it comes to grabbing your audience’s attention. A great way to do just that is to use eye-grabbing headlines in your social media writing to make your post stand out. The best headlines serve as irresistible invitations to continue reading your content.

The best headlines should include power words that evoke emotions from readers or encourage them to take a specific action. For example, using specific numbers or data on a topic that you know readers would be interested in – “80% of working adults find these courses beneficial for career growth”.

5. Be Visual

Marketing firm MDG Advertising found that content paired with an image attracted 94% more views on average than content without visuals. We live in an age where everyone has a camera in their pocket thanks to smartphones so we have become accustomed to viewing high quality imagery or videos. Visuals, videos in particular, have an opportunity to convey a brand’s personality and story in a more compelling way than strictly written text could.

6. Call-to-Action (CTA)

A post without a CTA is a wasted opportunity. Including a CTA at the end of your posts, whether it be a simple ‘Learn More Here’, or a multiple choice question, can be key to driving up engagement on your post. A CTA serves as a guide to your audience on specific actions you’d like them to take – do not underestimate its importance.

7. Add Your Brand’s Personality

You want to ensure that an introduction, or reminder, of who you are and what your brand is stands out in your social media posts. Be sure to infuse your brand personality and tone in your copy as well. This is how your audience will remember you and helps to create Top of Mind (TOM) recall for your brand.

How is Engagement Measured on Social Media?

Now that you have the basic tools on drafting a good social media post, how do you measure whether your post is doing well or not? The key here would be a Social Media Marketing Funnel.

This funnel helps to map out how a person develops a relationship with a brand, primarily by moving through four stages – Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, and Loyalty. As a brand, you have to decide which stage of the funnel you will be focusing on with social media – doing so will determine the metrics used to measure engagement.

Let’s break it down into three defined levels – the Bottom of Funnel (BOFU), the Middle of Funnel (MOFU), and Top of Funnel (TOFU).

At the TOFU level, you will want to focus on two key metrics:

• Awareness and reach: social media reach, ad impressions, and keyword searches
• Visitorship and views: website, landing page, social media pages

At the MOFU level, these would be:

• Content readers: how many web visitors are browsing your website pages?
• Leads: how many opt-ins have you received?

And finally, at the beginning level of BOFU, you will want to focus on:

• Prospects: The potential clients – people who are not currently customers, but are most likely to convert.
• Customers: Your current clients – former leads or prospects who have already completed the purchase process once but have the potential to be converted into recurring customers.
• Repeat Customers: Customers who have completed the purchase process more than once and have the potential to be converted into long-term fans of your brand.
• Advocates: These are your long-term customers who help to spread your content through their own social networks.

Examples of Engaging Social Media Posts

Let’s take a look at some social media content writing examples of brands who have used their channels to post engaging content.

Nike

Instead of limiting themselves to only one Facebook page, Nike uses separate pages for its main product categories – Golf, Skateboarding, Nike Run Club, American Football, and Soccer. Even though Nike’s main target audience are athletes, they abide by the main rule – understand your audience wants and needs. A golfer would have very different needs from a soccer player, so Nike has enabled themselves to create content specific to each of their audiences and ensures they remain relevant.

Additionally, Nike also makes use of imagery, especially of their more famous athletes. In this example, Nike used a high quality image of world-famous tennis player Roger Federer as the main focal point of the post, with a strong headline – “Outplay yourself”. Keeping with their brand, they ended the post with their famous saying, #justdoit.

ABC News

Earlier, we spoke about taking advantage of visuals to entice viewership of your posts. However, there is another feature that is not as regularly used as it should be. Facebook’s 360 feature allows viewers to engage with your videos or images by moving their phone and viewing your visual from different angles – a unique way for your audience to engage with your posts.

ABC News successfully used this when reporting on a New York City blizzard. Enabling the 360 feature allowed their audience to experience the snowfall from multiple angles – all without having to be caught in the snowstorm itself.

NTUC FairPrice

Local Singaporean supermarket retailer NTUC FairPrice showcased their understanding of their target audience perfectly in a witty campaign they did on Facebook. NTUC FairPrice used their products in a series of images and combined them with well-known Singaporean street names. Through this, they were able to showcase their products in creative ways – a method one might not expect from a supermarket chain.

Their social media content writing played on local Singlish colloquialism, NTUC FairPrice used the hashtag #EverywhereAlsoSeeFood and connected with thousands of Singaporeans online – causing it to go viral.

Secretlab

Secretlab, a company that specialises in gaming chairs, used their social media channels to promote a special series of chairs they were releasing. With their Monster Hunter chair series, Secretlab used Monster Hunter related hashtags to reach their fanbase, and made use of a clear call-to-action (CTA).

With full visuals displaying the chairs, the CTA allowed their audience to easily be directed to purchase the chairs – without having to search for it themselves.

Singapore Airlines

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many airlines found themselves grounded due to closed borders. As such, Singapore Airlines produced a video for social media showcasing what one of their stewards had to do as a result of being redeployed.

This video showed the human side of Singapore Airlines, and explained how the pandemic had affected not them as a company, but their employees. This resonated with many who had also been impacted by the pandemic. Singapore Airlines was able to do a lot for their brand in a simple two minute video.

Conclusion

As social media continues to evolve the way people interact with brands, it is up to marketers to ensure that their firms stand out from the crowd. Never underestimate the power of good social media posts – they have the power to completely transform your brand for the better.

With your understanding of what makes a good social media post, you might be eager to learn more about the other aspects of social media marketing. Equinet Academy offers a comprehensive social media marketing course led by industry experts to guide you on how to develop, deliver, measure, and manage your social media channels.

Also, if you would like to learn and keep up with the latest digital marketing trends, Equinet Academy covers all 6 Core Modules of Digital Marketing that include:

• Digital Marketing Strategy
• Content Marketing Strategy
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Digital Advertising
• Social Media Marketing
• Digital Marketing Analytics (Google Analytics 4)

With the completion of these modules, learners will attain a Certified Digital Marketing Strategist Certificate. Please feel free to also browse the complete array of digital marketing courses we provide in-person in Singapore or online.