Like it or not, the wording of social media posts is critical to getting engagement. If you’re trying to use LinkedIn, Twitter or whatever to get people to read news announcements or blog posts, a headline or a label isn’t enough. The competition as people scroll through newsfeeds is too much. So what tips do the experts suggest?
I don’t like the lazy tease so beloved of local newspapers. They write a very short description which might be the sort of thing someone would say if they’d read the piece and were explaining it out loud, like this:
For some reason, this works, but I’m sure none of us want to do that. So what can we do, while still remaining professional?
For a start, always emphasise the value of clicking through. If there’s something useful to be gained by clicking, then make sure the viewer knows it. If there’s more than one thing, you’ve got a chance to show a list. People love lists!
I like pulling quotes from the article. This is straightforward, but the quotation marks make the post stand out.
A third idea is to suggest a fear of missing out, by suggesting that many other people might be reading the piece.
We can even combine these ideas, like this:
“Pulling quotes from an article as a social media teaser is easy to do”, says Chris Rand of the BMON Blog. You’ll learn other practical ways to make your social media posts get better engagement by reading his most popular article of the month, right here.