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The social media landscape is a noisy landscape. It’s an exciting world full of dynamism and a constant change. There are over 3.196 billion global social media users in 2018 (We Are Social)… For this reason, learning how to write great one-liners that engage your audience is necessary.

It’s no wonder why social media is such an important tool for a business’ marketing strategy. You can market your brand for free and when you do it right, you acquire fruitful ROI(Return On Investment) and drive traffic to your other landing pages. And yet, managing it is a source of frustration for many — especially social media copywriting.

That’s an understandable frustration. There are, after all, many things to consider to execute a successful social media strategy… And to be able to know how to do that, there’s CRO(Conversion Rate Optimization) and social media auditing to think about.

Of course, there’s also content creation to worry about for each social media channel you manage. There are tools available for making your social media management easier, for sure. But there’s only so far content replication can go…

Different channels have different audiences and post requirements. So, no, one-size-fits-all social media posting isn’t ideal for every time use.

copywriting via free stock

The Secret to Successful Social Media Copywriting

We scroll through our respective news feeds every day. Think back to the last social media post reacted to (liked, commented, etc.) from an event or a brand you follow.

Can you pinpoint the exact reason why you followed them? What triggered you to interact with the post? Was it an intriguing video? A compelling picture? Or perhaps it was a clever joke or an emotional statement that drove you to take a specific action?

Whatever it was, there was definitely a (not-so-secret) ingredient involved to have hooked you the way it did.

Have you ever wondered how the world’s best social media marketers do it?

The technique lies in seeing each social media network separately. You may have one target audience in mind, but your channels and your method of distribution are multiple. It’s time to stop constantly replicating your social media posts across all platforms. You can’t go wrong with tailored marketing stats.

How to Write One-liners for Each Social Media Platform

Every social media platform has its own set of requirements you need to know and take note of. And that is because understanding how they work and what their basic requirements are is important to create the perfect one-liner that will attract and encourage your audience to engage.

1. Facebook

It’s only fair to start off with the most-used social media platform in the world…

According to the Pew Research Center, Facebook continues to reign supreme as the highest utilized social network. 79% of all online adults are lurking on Facebook. It also has the highest rate of usage among Generation X.

facebook via free stock

  • Number of daily users: 1.5 billion
  • Character limit: 63,206 characters
  • Hashtags or no: Allowed, but they’re not popular on Facebook
  • Purpose: Geared towards news and entertainment. Good for website referral traffic. Look into producing video content — especially for Messenger’s My Day.

Facebook may have a large character limit, but using up all of that is far from ideal. Again, people aren’t on Facebook to read long-form content — unless it’s an intriguing story about how someone’s dad ruined a Christmas party or something like that.

Save your long-form write-ups for your blogs…

Facebook posts with 80 characters or less receive 66% higher engagement (Buffer). In addition, less text means more focus zeroing in on the visuals that accompany it. Partner all your links or shared external content with brief, catchy signals that would invite your audience to delve deeper.

How do you make it work for you?

  • Ask questions about your business’ latest ‘it’ product, or event.
  • The length of your post varies. It depends on who you’re targeting.
  • Build community and conversation.

Social media is a place for discussion, but some are more suited than others. And Facebook is one such example. So many discussions are waiting to happen in this platform, and all it’s waiting for, at times, is that you get the ball rolling.

The trick: Write conversational copies; especially ones that can morph into full-length discussions.

facebook sample screenshot

2. Twitter

Twitter is the home of the general population — especially teens who post their status updates… It’s also where trends and new memes are broadcasted.

Twitter freestock

  • Number of daily users: 100 million
  • Character limit: 280 characters
  • Hashtags or no: Only 1 or 2 appropriate hashtags.
  • Purpose: A social networking platform and a new platform at the same time. Retweeting and curation are strongly encouraged. Suitable for brands sharing their blog posts and promoting official website content.

Much like Facebook, it isn’t ideal to consume all 280 characters on Twitter unless it’s absolutely necessary. In fact, according to research done by Dan Zarrella, a tweet comprised of 120-130 characters is the sweet spot that won’t break your Twitter game.

Plus, tweets linked with images and other visuals get twice more engagement than those without.

And as you craft your tweets, keep in mind that hashtags are an effective way to summarize and indicate what your whole message is. It’s also an effective method for users to discover your posts when they search for tweets relating to a particular topic.

But as competent as hashtags are, don’t make the mistake of overusing it either. Text should comprise the majority of the tweet, with one or two hashtags squeezed in between. Buffer has found that there is a 21% higher engagement rate in having 1 or 2.

In addition, keep in mind that the most discoverable hashtags are the timely ones and the ones that involve social responsibility. Make use of humour, and don’t shy away from jumping into the bandwagon now and then — especially if it’s for a good cause.

The trick: Tweet about timely trends, and craft tweets in dialogue with other hashtags or famous memes.

How do you make this work?

  • Connect with your audience through the emotions behind the tweets and other comments.
  • Comment on relevant hashtags.
  • Join the discussion by tweaking popular memes.

Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee twitter screenshot.png

3. Instagram

Influencers, brands, and the general population pop up on Instagram to share all sorts of aesthetically pleasing visuals. It won’t be far-fetched to say that Instagram is the home of visual artistry among other social media platforms.

Instagram free stock

  • Number of daily users: 500 million
  • Character limit: 2,200 characters
  • Hashtags or no: Use at least 11 hashtags. You can add more, but relevant ones only.
  • Purpose: Prioritizes visuals above all else. Not ideal for marketing blogs or website traffic. Ideal for visual brands and casual company updates with the purpose of building B2C relationships.

In regard to the number of characters you can have, Instagram is lenient. But bear in mind that your captions are cut off after the first three lines.

For that reason, it’s recommended to limit words to that amount. If there is a need to have more text than preferred, include the crucial information at the very top. Avoid dallying.

And because Instagram is a highly visual social networking site, it goes without saying that your photos should speak for themselves. You are freer in your use of hashtags on Instagram compared to Twitter, but much like the latter, keep every hashtag relevant to your post to get the results you want.

How do you make Instagram work for you?

  • Post high-quality photos as much as possible. Reserve the raw and casual shots for your Instagram Stories.
  • Make your feed as aesthetically pleasing as possible.
  • Keep your captions brief and catchy.
  • The number of hashtags that work vary depending on your audience. So experiment.

The trick: Pack a punch in your copies to add emphasis on your visuals.

Instagram screencap

4. LinkedIn

LinkedIn takes the cake for being one of the world’s widely-used and most interesting content distribution channels. It’s highly geared towards professionals and has relationship building and networking in mind.

The level of intriguing went up a notch when LinkedIn introduced its Influencers Program back in 2012. It became open to recruiting influential business figures to guest blog on LinkedIn’s publishing platform.

And in 2014, it became open to everybody managing an account on LinkedIn. Nowadays, it’s an open avenue where people share original content to a larger audience.

LinkedIn freestock

  • Number of monthly users: 260 million
  • Character limit: 1,300 characters
  • Hashtags or no: No hashtags in this network.
  • Purpose: A professional network used heavily for sharing professional content with different industries.

94% of B2B marketers distribute content across LinkedIn. For this reason, long-form content is a lot more likely to do increasingly well on LinkedIn. Polished and professional content always does well on LinkedIn. Don’t hesitate to share your stories.

A lot of LinkedIn posts include links that point the way to an official company website or a specific landing page. Putting up occasional work-related memes can also be a nice break from the uptight atmosphere that exists in professional networking sites.

How do you make it work?

  • Stay attuned with all of your industry news, and be quick to post the latest updates.
  • Share exciting announcements about your company or any of your events.
  • Pull quotes from a recently posted article, and pair it with a link to the original source of content.

The trick: Fresh, insightful, long-form content is the way to go.

Linkedin screenshot Hubspot post

5. Google Plus (+)

Google Plus is different in that it offers ripe search engine optimization opportunities for your business.

You can think of it as a social layer. Whatever kind of content you post on Google Plus, it gets added to search results in Google Plus’ circles. Your visuals — images and videos — get exposure in the search results too.

Google Plus free stock

  • Number of monthly users: 400 million
  • Character limit: no character limit
  • Hashtags or no: Hashtags aren’t popular on Google +.
  • Purpose: Has a network of strong communities that range across people’s various interests. It also acts as a social layers across search results.

Google is pretty good at keeping tabs on social media platform activity. Google Plus is a little different in that you can drive organic traffic to your site when you make use of relevant keywords.

How do you make it work?

  • Join a community relevant to your business
  • Make use of keywords that you want a post to rank for
  • Hashtags aren’t popular, but use hashtags relevant to your post.

The trick: Ask for engagement in addition to your CTAs

Google Plus is notable for having decent potential and presents opportunities for many B2B marketers. But it’s incredibly underrated compared to the others.

While it’s true that its popularity isn’t anywhere close to Facebook’s or Instagram’s, there’s still something to be had of 28% of B2B marketers using the platform to implement content marketing strategies.

Hubspot Google + screenshot

The Takeaway

Don’t post or add captions just for the heck of it. It’s fine to do that on your personal accounts, but it’s not advisable if you’re looking at your company’s social media account as a marketing tool. Likewise, this doesn’t translate to unnecessarily stressing out over every post, caption, or hashtag.

The secret merely lies in audience research coupled with a tailored marketing strategy.

Managing your company’s social media presence is no easy task, that’s for sure. But with the right strategy and enough experimentation, you are perfectly capable of crafting clever posts that will have your target audience talking. Rest assured, social media copywriting can even guarantee loads of fun too.

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By AL Gomez

Al Gomez is an SEO Consultant. Al has over 12 years’ client digital marketing experience and has proven track records of successful projects and expertise in various marketing channels. He is passionate about solving online marketing problems like generating leads and increasing sales. He is also the Consultant for a digital marketing agency, Dlinkers offering services like SEO, PPC, Email marketing, & Web Development.

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