Writing Facebook posts for your business.
Writing Facebook posts for your business is a fantastic idea but very time intensive and needs constant input. For a small business that usually means someone on the team has to take responsibility to get those ads and posts written. Just make sure you start with a good brief. If you don’t have that luxury, here are some tips to help you.
Five writing techniques to improve engagement
- Write in the first person. People like talking to people, rather than just a website or a brand. First person gives your copy feelings. “I love this!” Sound like a human rather than a corporate machine.
- Run a poll. People love giving their opinions and you can also learn about your audience. If you’re launching a new product it can be as simple as “Strawberry or Vanilla,” “Blue or Red”. Find out about where they go, what they like, what they do at different times of the day. This is your brand having a conversation with them. It is interaction, you listening and responding to your customer. People like to feel important.
- Let people see what other people have learned or think about your brand. It is one of the best trust building techniques you can use.
- Conversation starters. “You won’t believe it.” “What were we thinking.” “I don’t know about you but…” How you start that conversation is up to you and the tone of voice of your brand but it will invite interaction.
- How am I doing so far? A question is a great way to start a conversation, to invite engagement and interaction. So, questions like, “What’s your favourite flavour?” or “What’s your favourite recipe?” really work. Explore every avenue with “What, where, when and how.”
Five awesome tools at your fingertips.
- Call to action. Every Facebook post should include a call to action, prompting the reader to take the next steps. At one time, call to action buttons were only available if you are creating an ad, not for organic posts. However, that has changed. Go to your Ad Manager (click on the menu on the far right of your page and select “Manage ads.”) In the top left menu of your Ad Manager select Page posts. You can create and manage posts here and select the type of call to action button you want. At the time of writing there are 17 options, prompting your customer to take action.
- Reply to all comments. This can be very tricky as you’ll get lots of gripes but you can show empathy with your customers. Respond to people by name and be understanding.
- If you’d like your customers to follow a link, use a link management platform like bitly. This shortens long links which is perfect for a character limited space (a link description is limited to 30 characters in Facebook). You can also track the clicks across all the platforms where you use that bit link.
- Get to the point quickly when you are writing Facebook posts. You have 128 characters at the top of the post to engage your customer, after that the message is truncated.
- You can put text on your image but make sure that is covers less than 20% of the image or they may get penalised and your post gets shown to less people. Pack shots, book covers or album covers can get exemption from this rule when reviewed by Facebook.
Five things to keep in mind.
- Be consistent. This is true for everything you write for your brand but there’s no harm in reminding yourself. Talk like your brand. Are you a bouncy and bubbly beauty brand or simple, plain no-nonsense product? Keep that voice in your head when you write. If you’re having trouble with a consistent tone-of-voice, picture a personality that you feel reflects your brand and write like they talk.
- Get to the point. Your Facebook audience has very itchy thumbs. They scroll rapidly down the page, so stick to saying one thing.
- Check out what your competition are doing. You don’t want to sound the same because you won’t stand out.
- Put a social media strategy in place. You want to grow your fanbase and get people to come to your page without having to pay for it, so you should rotate the type of posts that appear. Give them some news about either your company or your industry – a new product, a new team member or new innovation. Be helpful, offer advice, tips and tricks. Deliver value through limited time offers. A mix of sales and engagement posts will make the customer experience more rewarding.
- Think like your customer. It is not what you can offer them but what the customer is looking for. What problem of theirs can you solve? It should have a value proposition– what’s in it for them, what’s going to capture their attention.
If you’d like more copywriting tips be sure to check out the blog. It is updated all the time with posts that I think will help you with your business writing. And if you’d like me to cover a specific topic, just drop me a like or put it in the comments below.
