Have you ever felt that you’re screaming into the void when you post on social media? You’re not alone. In fact, many brands and business owners struggle to see any engagement on their social posts. Many ask themselves how they can write good social media posts.
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According to a study by Rival IQ, brands see an average engagement of:
- 0.9% on Facebook posts
- 1.6% on Instagram posts
- 0.048% on Twitter
Yes, that means on average, most people see less than 2% of engagement on their social media posts.
Sounds like bad news, right? But WAIT, before you throw your computer out the window out of sheer frustration, there’s good news.
The good news is that social media is changing and platforms are shifting to encourage users to focus on building community, creating connections and sharing fantastic content.
As entrepreneurs and brands figure out how to adjust to a changing social media world and refocus on creating real engagement, there’s one thing to note: fantastic content matters more than ever on social media.
So what makes people stop, click and engage with your social media? How can you create content that is worthy of a click, whether it’s a like, a share, a comment or a link click?
Let’s break down the 5 factors that make a social post click-worthy.
1. The 4 Keys of Content Marketing
Social media is a form of content marketing and there are four goals of content to keep in mind.
Content should:
Educate:
Educational content teaches your audience something new. It shows your audience how to solve a problem.
Inspire:
People are always looking for inspiration and social media is a perfect place to give it to them with a quote, inspirational video or moving story.
Inform:
Sharing breaking news, the latest developments in your industry or announcements about your business are a few ways you can create content that informs.
Entertain:
At the end of the day, humans love pure entertainment. Content that is humorous, creative or just plain fun is fantastic for content to engage your audience. Think GIFs, funny videos or memes!
No matter what you post on social media, it should do one of these things for your audience. If it’s not, you might want to rethink why you’re sharing it!
2. Personal connections
Humans want to connect with other humans, no matter what. The term “authentic” gets thrown around often in social media and while it’s become a bit overused, the underlying need for it still exists. Followers can’t build trust if they don’t feel like they know and like you and followers who don’t trust you won’t engage with your content. So even if you are posting as a business, you can still share your personality or personal story with your posts.
3. Storytelling
There’s plenty of science to back up the power of storytelling. Humans are wired to remember stories and social media is a perfect avenue to tell them. Stories have characters, a plot, meaning and most of all, emotional investment. By telling your story or the story of your business, you can connect to your audience emotionally. The story below is Amy Porterfield’s but it’s a story that will resonate with her audience because they may have felt the same emotions she did. She’s drawing her audience in with a story that will build their connection to her.
4. Headlines
Copy matters, especially in social media where most people are scrolling past hundreds of content options. Humans have an attention span of about 8 seconds. This means we have a shorter attention span than a goldfish.
Whether you choose to write a longer story-type post or get personal, the copy of your content will matter, especially that first sentence. There are a few tried and trusted headline rules that work for social media posts.
Curiosity
Humans are curious creatures and tempting interest with curiosity works. The key to making your audience curious is to give your audience just another background that will pique their curiosity. If your post is too vague, then it won’t pique as much curiosity.
Negativity
Headlines with negative superlatives (never, worst, stop) earn 59% more clicks than positive titles, according to research on 65,000 paid link titles from Outbrain.
How to
The “How To” post is usually an educational one. Our friends at CopyBlogger say these headlines appeal to readers because most of us have a need to improve our lives. To do a “How To” headline correctly, you should focus on the need of the reader and promise to fulfill that need.
Ask a question
Asking a question can automatically involve a user. The key to a good question headline is that your user answers “yes” or “Maybe.” If the question elicits a “no” answer from a user, they won’t click or engage!
Use numbers
Numbers set the expectation for the reader. They know exactly what they’re getting into with a numbered headline. People tend to be attracted to certainty so telling them right off the bat what they’ll expect can increase engagement.
5. Images
Fun Fact! When people hear information, they’re likely to remember 10% of that information 3 days later but when that information is paired with a relevant image, people remember 65% of the information 3 days later.
Visuals are very important in social media and can contribute to a scroll-stopping post. However, not any old image will do. It’s important that the visual is relevant to the information and supports the copy in getting your point across.
How can you maximize clickable social media posts?
Now that you know all the different components of a clickable social media post, you want to test your posts so that you learn which methods work best for your audience.
To do this you need to reshare your content by using variations.
By creating different variations of your content, you can test out these different clickable tactics to maximize your post’s chances of getting clicked!
MeetEdgar founder Laura Roeder loves to say, “Every single social media post is an opportunity so multiply the social media posts to multiply your opportunities.”
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Social media moves fast and if you want to give your posts a chance to get clicked, you may want to share them more than once or twice. By creating variations of the same post, you can get your message across without sounding repetitive. Plus it gives you an opportunity to test out these different ways to create a clickable social media post.
Edgar makes it really easy to do this too! You can quickly add your different variations with just the click of a button and then save them to your library. (You can even have Edgar write your variations for you. Seriously, check out it works here.)
Then, once they’ve posted you can check your history tab to see which clickable tactic worked for your audience.
If you are struggling to get engagement on your posts or wondering what you can do to get even more, do an audit of your social media posts and test using the different tactics shared in this article.
And if you want to really get more from your social media posts, try MeetEdgar for free for 2 weeks! Give our variations feature a whirl following these ideas and watch those clicks come in!
