8.5 Creating social media messages

The goal of creating social media messages is not only to reach your audience, but also to achieve an intended effect. Proper grammar and punctuation are important in social media writing, as is accuracy. A careless error could undermine the credibility of your brand. Here are a few other factors to consider when writing social media messages.

Engagement, engagement, engagement

More than many forms of communication, social media messages need to motivate the audience to engage with the content. Several strategies can encourage engagement, such as responding quickly to feedback from audience members, creating contests, and inviting the audience to respond to a question. Including photos and videos in social media posts substantially increases engagement, as does integrating trending topics (Redsicker, 2014). This requires careful consideration and research that will pay off if the trending hashtags are chosen wisely. Hai Poke, a startup restaurant in Columbus, did this by tapping into the Pokemon Go craze in the summer of 2016. The restaurant launched a social media contest and created a fun, timely, interactive message.

Consistency

The core message needs to be articulated across all social media platforms in a consistent way that conveys a unified voice. The message also needs to reflect the brand image; in other words, it should reinforce the brand “feel” or personality. When you think about the various social media fails you’ve no doubt encountered online, a major reason audiences often dislike a message is because its tone or content is inconsistent with the company’s brand personality.

Timeliness

Studies have shown a significant correlation between social media engagement (e.g. sharing activity, views and clickthroughs) and common work and break schedules (e.g. higher engagement before, after and during breaks in work, as well as on the weekend). Being aware of your audience’s social media habits is key to posting content at the right time to increase engagement.

#GetFound

Ensuring that your content is seen by your intended audience is largely dependent on a longer term social media strategy (building relationships, community, social capital and credibility), however hashtags (#) can be used to flag/signal that your content is part of a larger ongoing discussion (e.g. #COVID19). Depending on who your audience and stakeholders are, they may be using different hashtags to continue an online discussion about a specific issue. In the case of Twitter, doing a quick keyword or hashtag search can help reveal what hashtags are being used most often for any issues that your content and communications goal might relate to. Make sure to use hashtags correctly and somewhat sparingly (a long list of hashtags can sometimes come across as “spammy” and may be criticized by members of your audience).

Concise writing

Similar to news writing, social media writing is straightforward. Because you’re competing against countless other messages in the social media sphere, you do not have much time and space to capture the audience’s attention. This is especially the case with platforms that have character limits. You have to think carefully not only about what the message will say but how to say it in a concise manner that has the intended effect.

For more information on effective social media writing, take a look at this video with Nicholas Love, social media director at The Ohio State University:

A/B Testing 

Social media content creators will often do small tests of their social media messages, almost like mini-focus groups, using either internal or external audiences. This is typically done by issuing two versions of the same message on a social media platform (the only difference being one key element that the writer wants to test), and seeing which version elicits more immediate and significant interaction from the audience. Through ongoing A/B testing, a social media writer can become aware of what forms of messaging resonate the most with their audience (e.g. specific words, phrasing, length, hashtags, use of emoji, images, invitations for engagement etc.). Hootsuite has an excellent short article on A/B testing here.