In the age of digital marketing, companies need to be connecting and interacting online. For many, this is a learning curve. I get questions frequently about social media posting: what to post, when, how much, etc. The most important of all these is the message itself. I’m going to give you my top 5 tips for crafting a quality social post.

1. Quality Content
   You need to have something good to say. If you have quality content, it makes this a LOT easier. If you don’t have quality content, you’re either going to have to start developing some or get creative to keep your audience interested in what you have to say. Most importantly, the content needs to be relevant to your audience. If you’re posting things that don’t have anything to do with your industry or company, then it’s going to cause confusion. So ask yourself…what are *they* interested in learning about? What knowledge do you have that you can share with them for *their* benefit?
2. Positive Tone
   Tone can be very easily misconstrued in text form. Make sure that posts don’t have a negative undertone that might be interpreted in a bad light.
3. Short & Simple
   You don’t want your posts to be too text heavy. They need to know the purpose of the post, but it also needs to be conversational. People read very quickly, and if they’re skimming it and it’s hard to read or too long, there’s less of a chance that they’ll read it all. In addition, be aware of using the same words unnecessarily. Try reading your post out loud – if it sounds funny out loud, it may need to be re-worked.
4. Photos & Video
   Social media is visual. People interact and engage with things that catch their eye. Use quality images and videos if you have them.
5. Call-to-actions
   What do you want your audience to *do* after they read your post? Not every post warrants a call-to-action, but if you’re using links in your post then one of the goals is to get them to click on the link. This ties heavily into my first tip – if you’ve crafted a quality post, chances are they will engage with you and take that action you ask them to take – but ‘the ask’ has to be there. If they don’t see any value from the message, it won’t give them a reason to click on the link.

A good thing to try when implementing some of these tactics is to A/B test them. What is an A/B test? Well, it’s when you craft the same message two different ways to see how they each perform. Send multiple posts on the same content piece and then look at your analytics data to see which ones performed better. This will help you pinpoint what content is resonating with your audience so you can create more posts that perform better.

Still need help with social media? We host training sessions and offer consulting, social media management, and more! Just reach out to our team of experienced social media marketers and we’ll be happy to help!