Welcome to our social media series with ideas from our Social Media Coordinator, Kayla Sherry!
How do you get your content on social media noticed by your target audience? Whether you’re focusing on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or any other social media site, here are a few ideas that will help you to present your brand on social media:
1) Establish a brand voice. To make your content stand out, establish how you want your brand to sound and be represented on social media. Start by identifying the target market you want to reach. If you’re trying to reach adventure-seeking tourists, you might have a more casual, energetic tone. If you’re trying to reach small business owners, you might have a more professional yet inspiring tone. Whether the tone is more casual or more professional, you’ll still want to keep the voice interesting to engage users.
To bring your target audience to life, create a persona to represent the avatar that you want to reach. Write as if you’re writing directly to that one person, rather than to a sea of unknown individuals. Although you will have a diverse audience, you can still assess the interests of your user base to help form a voice that resonates with them.
To establish your brand voice, you can also brainstorm a few words to represent your brand. For example:
- Innovative, Supportive, Creative, Encouraging – for a brand that aims to inspire entrepreneurs/innovators and establish themselves as a support system
- Authentic, Relatable, Dependable, Original – for a brand rooted in an important story, culture, or value that looks to share their mission with others
- Knowledgeable, Professional, Adaptable, Confident – for a brand that seeks to be industry thought leaders by sharing their expertise, research, etc. with their audience
These words can serve as a tone guide when crafting social media captions. If your main word is “Humorous,” you would avoid using complicated, high-level language in your social media posts. If your brand claims to be “Disruptive,” you might opt for bolder language and creative calls to action.
2) Create a hook to get your audience’s attention. When someone comes across one of your posts, think about what they’ll see first in your caption. There needs to be a hook in the first few characters to grab their attention. For example:
- “Calling all __________!” – to personalize the message and pull your audience in
- Questions like, “Did you know?” or “True or False?” or “Are you looking for _________?” – to entice users to read more to uncover the answer
- “You don’t want to miss out on _______” or “For a limited time only…” – to create a sense of urgency and exclusivity
3) Think about what users are seeing from a consumer perspective. Make sure that your content is readable and easy to follow. For example, you may want to break your content into paragraphs and sections so that it’s easier to read. You can also add a little pizazz with emojis that are relevant to the content, make sense for your brand, and align with the established voice.
Social media is not generally the place for long-form written content, since appealing visual content tends to perform better. A good rule of thumb is to have a short catchy caption, and you may want to use that to direct people to long-form content on a blog post.
Make sure that your Call To Action is clear and that you’ve made it easy to find the link (especially if you’re using a site like Instagram, where you aren’t able to include a hyperlink directly in the post).
4) If you DO use AI to generate content ideas, make sure to rewrite it in your brand’s voice. Many businesses have started utilizing AI tools to generate social media content, and while there can be benefits to learning to use AI as a brainstorming tool, relying on it for your copy can do more harm than good. Without background knowledge on your brand, AI copy generators will produce a default voice that’s uniform with all of the other AI-generated content that’s out there.
Make sure that the final copy you publish on any social media site represents your unique target audience and your brand’s specific voice (you’ll need a human to do that!).
5) Create visually appealing images. Visuals are a big part of most social media sites, especially Facebook and Instagram. The images you use contribute to the story you’re telling, and they also get attention! Stay tuned for an upcoming newsletter with tips about how to create compelling images.
Hit reply to let us know which of these tips you find helpful!
Would you like strategic guidance & support to curate your brand’s compelling social media content? Set up a free 15-minute consultation with Sandy here.
Reimagining Places With You,
The PPR Strategies Team
