Social media has become the most used means to communicate in today’s world. With the existence of numerous social media platforms, people are engaged through various means- text, picture, video, and audio. Statistics show that there are over 93 million internet users in Nigeria with 80% of them as active users of Facebook. Today many companies, organizations, and even individuals have found a way to connect to an audience of people who may be interested in their products, services or story.
Yes, sales, marketing, advertising, etc are important, but every enterprise or organization should strive to “communicate” rather than to “sell” and I will be coming from the angle of effective communication on social media in this piece. When you’re able to appeal to the mind of the reader by effectively communicating, before long, you become a source of credibility and then they will be more disposed to buy from you.
Whether you’re a company, public figure, writer, non-profit or for-profit organization, etc, there are some general guidelines that you can follow when generating content for your social media posts. The ultimate goal for every social media post is to get maximum engagement from your the target audience and so the following guide will be very helpful for you.
Put a slice of yourself in your content
Regardless of the type of brand you represent or the kind of organization you run, your audience wants to connect with you, they want to feel like they know you, the human element is a very important part of writing for social media. You need to have a brand voice behind every kind of content you put out there. The aim of this is to converse with your target audience and give them a mental picture of who you are, what you stand for, what values you represent. A slice of yourself should reflect in your writing, giving your audience a persona that they can relate to you and this is especially important for writers and public figures. Your audience want to be able to connect with your personality whether you’re funny, reflective, academic, etc.
What information interests your target audience?
If you’re a company, an organisation or a community, you need to find out what interests your target audience, user generated content is the best way to ensure engagement with your followers. For instance, if your company built a software for students and you want to communicate this, you need to find out what challenges students face currently that probably your products can solve or that you can generally give advice on. This way, they find your social media post helpful and are more likely to share it with their various student groups and when crafting your post, find a way to bring it back to your product or your service or the benefits that your community can provide.
What problems or issues do you want to give a voice to?
If you’re trying to build a community, when generating content for social media it is necessary to highlight the problems or issues that you want to give a voice to. This is a suitable guide for non-profits. What does your organization seek to achieve? If it is the empowerment of women and girls, or instance, you need to find out the issues and underlying problems that stop women and girls from reaching their potential, give a voice to these issues, and tell your audience what role you play in providing a solution to the issue you have highlighted. Avoid sounding too serious or using too many statistics, make your post as easy to understand as possible.
Pass your message across to your audience with a story.
Storytelling is one of the big trends used for social media communication today. Posts that are well crafted in a story have been proven to get twice as much engagement from followers. This goes back to the visual nature of people, even if you can’t use video content and you don’t have cutting-edge graphics skills to create high-quality designs, use your words to tell a story this way your readers can visualize your thoughts in their minds and so you have communicated with them! Passing your message is important, but doing it the right way, is more important. By telling a story, your audience can find themselves in narrative and connect with you on another level. It shows how much you understand their problems and challenges, which also makes you the best person to solve it – whether with your product or services.
Be clear and easy to understand
Write clearly and in a language that your audience will understand. Always have your readers at the back of your mind when generating content for social media, you write for them and you want them to understand you. Regardless of how technical your field is, find creative and simple ways to pass information across to them. In the online legal space, for instance, many lawyers have found ways to use social media to simplify the law in a way that the average person in Nigeria whether educated or not, will understand. Add a dash of humor if you like, feel free to use illustrations from movies (many brands jumped on the “Game of Thrones” trend recently), essentially write in a relatable manner, don’t let your content be too vague and uninteresting for your audience.
Don’t forget to have attractive pictures!
People are naturally very visual, and so attaching attractive pictures to your piece of information or write-up leave a image in the minds of your readers, in fact, having an eye-catching picture gets their attention. The high level of visual disposition that people have is the reason why video content is becoming popularly used in modern social media communications.
Communication through social media can be tough sometimes because the space is now so noisy and there are more people trying to “market” and “sell” and less people are actually communicating and giving value to the readers. However, don’t be discouraged if you haven’t had enough engagement overtime, be consistent in giving value, and soon you’ll find the right type of audience – it’s no longer about the numbers, it’s now about the level of engagement!
