Four hours a day, or about 170 meters-700 meters – that is the approximate time and scrolling length your audience indulges in a day on a mobile or a laptop screen. Among them, they spend 2.5 hours – 3 hrs on social media platforms on average. And with the lockdown hours at home and the new normal of working from home, the screen time has increased by leaps and bounds.
We never actually consciously realize how much time we spend looking at the screens. But add up these hours, and you can see there’s so much happening and so much for your audience to consume. Just imagine the amount of content your audience is bombarded with during these hours every day.
But what does it take to make people stop? What makes people stop scrolling, give a few seconds to register the message, and then if they like it, they go on reading further. What does it take to make your place in the audience’s mind, pushing through the clutter and positioning yourself? Social media content marketing is not easy, but no matter how overwhelming it sounds, there are always ways to win your audience’s attention and buy them into your message.
“Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains,” said none other than Steve Jobs. So, simplicity is the key. But, how to achieve the same?
Here are the five key elements for writing social media posts that will help you connect well with your audience. Plan your social media content marketing to keep these communication pillars in mind.
- Don’t push your product; pull in your audience
The audience comes first, always, the audience first. All brands communicate, but few brands connect. The brands which connect with the audience are the ones who keep the consumer’s interest first. Craft your brand story around what your consumer needs. Think about what is bothering your audience, what is the tension point for your audience in their daily life that you/your brand can address. Build a story around it. Show the audience how you can help, and not what you have to offer. If the audience finds you resonating with their interest, trust us, they will find out more about you.
2. Be the voice of empathy
It is always about how you say things more than what you say. To connect to your audience, you have to empathize with them. Do not forcefully feed them your offering, or make them feel wrong about their concerns. Do not ever make them feel as if they are being judged. That’s a cardinal sin. Be a friend. Talk to your audience like a friend, a well-wisher who the audience will go to for suggestions. Always be positive. Having a good sense of humour never hurts anyone, but it completely depends on brand tonality.
3. Answer the ‘WHY’ first
In journalism, the classic model of prioritizing and structuring information is ‘Inverted Pyramid’.’ At the top is the headline, which gives the essential information, followed by further details in the body copy, and at the end comes any other relevant information. Similarly, any communication you write on social media addresses the essential information that the consumer needs to know.
But instead of focusing on ‘what’ the story is, as we do in journalism, the key to capturing people’s minds on social media is to start with ‘why.’ Why does the audience need to know something that you are about to say? Why should the consumer listen to you? Why does it matter? Start answering these questions, and you will have content that your audience can relate to.
4. A picture speaks 1000 words
We know how cliché this saying is, but we can’t stop banking enough on great images in the digital age. Think about it. How many times have you got more traction on your post with a great picture instead of a post with a relatively common picture? Remember, for social media content marketing, you can create a lot of curiosity and drive attention just through an image itself. And when that gets accompanied by bang-on copy, you hit the ball out of the stadium. So look for photos that are vibrant and beautifully capture the essence of your story.
5. Call-to-action like you mean it
Often, the CTA part is the most mundane yet the loudest section of a brand post. But come to think of it, instead of treating it like a mandate which has to go at the end in the biggest font size possible and saying hurry-hurry-hurry, it is the sign-off line for the brand which concludes the decision-making. If your audience has reached the end of your content, it is highly likely that he/she has already bought into your proposed idea. But it is up to you to make the brand experience there onwards pleasant and memorable for the audience. It will not just make the audience fall for it but remember too.
Summing it up –
Know your audience well, talk about their needs, have a friendly tone, use great pictures that resonate with your brand, and finish it off in style. Moreover, your brand’s essence should be at the core of every communication you write, so make sure your brand is the hero in all your content.
To know more about social media content services, keep following Pepper Content. This social media content company is growing fast as one of India’s best content providers with the best solutions for your content requirements.
