BNL Team Takeover #1: Lyle’s Copywriting Tips for Social
5 tips for writing great social media copy
Welcome back to the BNL show, and welcome to our first-ever team takeover blog post! We’ll be doing a whole series of these over the coming months, with our designers, writers, social media managers, strategists, and more all sharing insider info on the industry from their perspective. Stay tuned for more articles like this one!
Hi! I’m Lyle, BNL’s lead copywriter. In an average week, I write caption copy for about 150-200 social posts, spread across more than 40 clients.
That might sound like a lot, but it’s not as difficult as it sounds. Why? Because I’ve developed my own personal formula for social media copywriting!
Whether you’re sporadically updating your company's Instagram, or managing posts in advance for a handful of accounts, adopting some personal best practices is essential for social media success—here are my 5 tips for improving your social media copy.
Simplify Without Talking Down
When I was starting out as a writer, I was instructed to write for a seventh-grade reading level. I did this to start, but I always felt that it was a bit demeaning to think of readers in this way.
That’s why the first tip to spruce up your copy is to keep it simple, without dumbing it down. Make no mistake: audiences are smart, so you need to trust their intelligence when writing. But on the other side of the coin, think of the (very true) words of Albert Einstein: “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
So what does this actually mean? How do you strike the balance between keeping things simple and maintaining nuance, depth, and complexity?
Think of a piece of specialized knowledge you have about your industry—something that an outsider would need to be educated on to understand. For instance, take the complicated legal process of claiming an inheritance and all the little steps that need to be completed to the letter. When writing a social media post on a topic like this, it’s tempting to do one of two things:
Get into the nitty-gritty of every single detail, bogging down and confusing the message, or
Make it so overly simple that nothing of value can really be gained by reading it
If you’ve ever found yourself seemingly stuck between these options, don’t worry. It happens to me all the time! That’s why I keep a few simple tools on deck to help me break up tricky topics without losing the message:
Idea Organizers
Bullet points and numbered lists are a great way to organize ideas on the page, which will help them stay organized in the brain! Intelligence isn’t your limiting factor with your audience—it’s attention span. So digestible ideas that are physically easy to read will tend to perform better.
Varying Sentence Lengths
Bullet points are great
But if we only used them
Things would start to get weird
You can’t always rely on simple tools like lists to keep information accessible in your copy. When you do write in paragraph form, experiment with sentence lengths. By mixing up short, medium, and long sentences, you’ll be able to create a conversational copywriting cadence, establishing a rhythm that keeps people reading until the end.
Introducing and Defining New Terms
Have you ever been instructed to avoid jargon at all costs? It’s a fair point—no one wants to be overloaded with niche terms they don’t care about. But at the same time, people love learning new things. That’s why I recommend you don’t shy away from jargon completely. Instead, introduce new terms and define them one at a time. This works best if the term is connected to an interesting fact about your industry. For instance, if you work in a trade, you could show off a specialized tool and what it does in a video, with the caption focusing on the tool’s name and purpose.
2. Focus on the Inception of the Idea
Most people don’t like being told what to do. But this can lead to a conflict of interest when your goal is marketing to them. So how do you get around natural stubbornness and get the chance to tell people your story?
As marketers, our entire job focuses on the reader, enticing them, engaging them, and persuading them to take the first step with a company. Today’s users (particularly Gen Z) are becoming more attuned to marketing, and will be naturally cautious the second they realize someone is trying to sell them something. That’s why I believe great marketing is about the inception of the idea.
Inception is defined as “the establishment or starting point of an institution or activity.” It’s the seed of an idea, one that originates within someone’s own mind—not on your social media caption. So when writing social copy, focus on subtly implanting an idea rather than force-feeding the details. Sell the benefits, the lifestyle, and the stories that go hand in hand with your company, and let the reader make their own decision.
3. Include the Reader as Soon as Possible
Once upon a time, social media was just that—a social network for people to stay connected. Today, for better or for worse, these platforms are commodified marketplaces, a smorgasbord of brands, celebrities, and regular people, all competing for attention.
That’s why, when writing copy for social media, it’s essential to draw your reader in—ideally in the first few lines.
Scrollers are gonna scroll. This means grabbing their attention with some kind of personal touch is vital to actually getting someone to read what you have to say. One of the easiest ways to do this is to simply ask a question related to your message.
Questions should act as a funnel, enticing people who answer ‘yes’ to learn more about your solution. If you’re selling laser hair removal, for example, you might ask ‘is unwanted body hair taking a toll on your confidence?’ This question doesn’t pass judgment, but simply invites people who connect with it to read on.
4. Write for Humans (Not Robots!)
We’ve all heard about the algorithms running our online lives behind the scenes. On social media, these tools are an important part of growing your account and finding a bigger audience.
While it’s great to have an understanding of algorithms, always write to human beings first and foremost. Your writing should feel conversational and natural. Three great (and simple) ways to keep it non-robotic are:
Contractions — Contractions are a small thing that can truly make all the difference for your tone. Look through your work and see where you can add contractions for a more casual vibe. Unless you’re writing for a very professional, serious business brand, contractions are almost always the move.
Humour — Maybe it’s for the benefit of the brand, maybe it’s for my own entertainment, but I try to crack jokes in my writing wherever possible. When people are laughing, they’re listening, so try to insert humour whenever possible (and appropriate)!
Self-Awareness — Brands that act like they’re not brands smack of inauthenticity, and will likely turn readers away. Exhibit self-awareness by proactively addressing critiques or concerns about your work. Be honest about the work you do and the values you embody—not just what it says on your ‘about’ page.
Wondering if your writing passes the humanity test? Read it out loud. This is a trick I picked up at school, and it comes in handy every day. Simply read it to yourself before posting, and see how it feels and sounds. Your natural instinct for language will likely kick in, prompting you to smooth out any rough and robotic patches.
5. Find the Story
Since the dawn of humanity, storytelling has been a pillar of our shared social experience. From cave drawings to comic books, people latch onto a great story like nothing else. That’s why you should be trying to find the narrative hidden within your social media copy.
The best brands have a story, and that story is always centred around people first and foremost. Apple Computers has created its own borderline mythology off of this idea; the image of two passionate geniuses working in a garage to reinvent the personal computer is a super enticing one, and it helped drive Apple to its earlier successes. I try to seek out this type of human story with every account that I work on because, ultimately, it’s these human stories that we gravitate to above all else.
Are you connecting the story of your client and their brand to whatever they’re trying to market? How can separate aspects of that story be combined into something greater than the sum of its parts? Searching for this at every opportunity has helped me turn out higher quality writing, and it can help your clients by putting something they always knew into words that anyone can understand.
Taking Your Socials to the Next Level
With that, you’ve learned my top five tips for copywriting—and it didn’t even cost you anything!
Learning is one thing, but putting knowledge into action is a whole other story. Whether you’re crunched for time or simply not feeling the joy when it comes to social media copywriting, BNL is here to help.
Our social media packages come complete with caption-writing services, with each post’s copy handcrafted to provide value, humour, uniqueness, and that essential human touch. If you’d like to learn more about our process, or if you’re ready to sit down for a consultation right away, don’t hesitate to get in touch.