Getting Beyond Meh…Creating Effective Social Media Posts

Creating social media posts is really easy, creating effective social media posts that actually accomplish something isn’t.

What are you doing?

This is the question I have started asking myself with every post created for our company or our clients. This gives fundamental guidance, and it’s helping.

I also think of a post as a type of Mad Lib.

These are my questions:

I want to __________________ with this post?

• share something interesting
• share knowledge
• share a fact
• share point of view
• teach something
• promote our company or services

I’m writing it for people _____________.

• who already follow our company on social media
• who already know of our company
• people who are looking for information related to the services we provide
• people who may be looking for knowledge we are sharing
• people who are trying to learn about a topic

When a person reads it I hope they will ________________.

• be glad they took the time to read it
• learn something
• laugh
• find it interesting enough to share
• remember it

If the goal is to get someone to complete an action make it easy for them, tell them what you’d like them to do:

• encourage them to respond with a comment
• give them a link to the intended destination
• give them relevant details for planning
• It’s important to remember the context of the platform…
• embedded links are always helpful
• if you want to provide links on Instagram, use LinkTree or Later as a means of providing multiple links not just a single profile link
• each social platform should have its own voice, tone, and purpose in your efforts
• know your followers, can you post the same content on each platform or is there so much overlap in followers that each platform has a unique place in your plans

Also, consider that, while most organizations undoubtedly publish more than one piece of content on a topic, a single post may be all one person sees. In creating a post, does it stand alone and provide enough information to be of value; it should. Organizations cannot, and should not, assume that people will see the entire body of work on a topic, nor that people should need to, to gain an understanding of your message.

Finally, we use Agora Pulse for all social media, it has definite advantages, but one of the biggest is that it works with Grammarly and lets us get two sets of eyes on every post. Agora or not, always have someone else look at your post if you can.These are my rules, and while they don’t have to be yours, it’s always good to have some in place to help everyone understand what your organization is trying to achieve with social media messaging.

Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN