Tips for Social Media Copywriting

Learn how to write copy specifically for social media, and how to use it as a marketable service.

 

Copywriting for Social Media

 

This is pretty much where I got my start as a professional copywriter. When I was in art school from 2009-2013, I had a hunch that copywriting for social media would be a big deal in the advertising world. Back then it wasn’t taught at all. There weren’t even any real courses about copywriting. You basically had to self teach and rely on feedback from your teachers on projects but even those were mostly critiqued on design not copy.  I was the little lone copywriter among the group of art directors. But even then I built my student profile around social media copy and always had that thought in my mind as something that would be useful and profitable as a professional. And luckily I was right. 

 

I got my first job in-house as a Content Contributor and then I moved up to Social Media Coordinator and just wrote tons of copy for social media all the livelong day, and also did strategy and fun stuff like that.

 

A great tip for new copywriters is, if you are in a job right now where you are not doing any copy work and you would like to be, just ask them if you can manage their social media. Chances are they will say yes and be happy to hand that responsibility over to you. They know they should be doing it, but probably don’t have the time to put in and having someone else like you managing it will be a relief. They will be really grateful and you’ll get to use that opportunity to build your portfolio and practice social media. You can experiment and have fun as well. 

 

I did this at a lot of my jobs because I really like social media and I thought it was super cool to get instant feedback from customers. I was able to test things to see what worked well and what didn’t. I would just ask them to take over their social media and get paid a little extra for it. I would track my hours and add it onto my invoice and it would add up and be so worth the time, money and experience.

 

How to Write Copy for Social Media

 

Social media copywriting is probably one of the most conversational types of copywriting that you are going to do. If you are writing for yourself, it should sound just like you and if you are writing for a client, it should sound like them. So you want to really get familiar with the voice of the person you are writing for and if you are writing for yourself, you want to make sure you are being authentic. It’s easy to get in a pattern of crafting our copy and captions similarly to someone in our industry that we look up to. But you are doing yourself a disservice by doing that. The more authentic you can be in your posts, the more people can connect with you. This goes along with how you format your posts, how you word them, how you structure, your use of emojis, capital letters, bolding and even using different fonts. That all matters and expresses the voice of yourself and your brand. It shapes how people see you.

 

You also want to be mindful of how people are going to see your content. For example, on Instagram, when people are scrolling through the feed, it’s only going to show the top line of copy. It’s up to the viewer to click on the caption and expand it to read further. You really need to focus on making that line pop, stand out and be attention grabbing. It could be a shocking fact, something funny, or include some emojis to make it more noticeable. You really want to make it something that grabs people. You might want to write out a full caption and then read it and find the line that is the essence of the entire post. Then figure out a way to put it at the top and still make it work, and grab people so that they click to expand to read the full caption. Even on Facebook you have to click to read the full caption, so really work on crafting that top line to be awesome and grab people’s attention.

 

Get creative with the format itself. I really have fun doing this with different emojis, different spacing, bullet points, fonts and stuff like that. You can experiment with all the different options. How you format your social media captions will be part of you or your client’s brand signature. Many influencers, coaches and brands are getting really specific and intentional about how their captions look and I think it’s really cool. 

 

Here is a tip for page breaks. Facebook is easy, just hit enter. But on Instagram it’s a little fussy. The secret is that there can’t be a space after the last character before you hit enter, otherwise it’ll bring that line back up to the previous line. So let’s say you put a period, make sure there is not a space after it when you hit enter. Then you’ll get that gap you are looking for in the format. Otherwise it’s going to just mush it all together, which can be infuriating when you are trying to make it look nice. There are also some apps out there you can use. I don’t personally use them but I know our friend Google can answer all questions so I’m sure you can find them in a simple search. You can use those apps to format your posts or you can copy them from your Notes and it’ll keep your spaces. But if you are in the Instagram app itself, that is the secret for those page breaks.

 

Another great thing you can do for writing captions, is the voice to text feature. This is great for clients that don’t like writing but they want their captions to be really in depth and thoughtful. Have them just talk out the caption and then you can go in and craft it into a beautifully written piece. You can also do a little social media stalking. I like to do this with my clients to really get to know their voice. I follow them on social media and listen to all their videos, interviews, podcasts, IGTV, stories, Facebook lives, and all that stuff. Listening to them will help you get into their head a little bit and it’ll make writing their captions easier, the more familiar you get with them. And when you are writing for yourself you can freewrite, don’t edit, just write it all out, whatever you are thinking, don’t overthink it, and then go in and edit. A lot of times for myself, I’ll end up with a couple different captions when doing this. I’ll get on a rant or tangent and it’ll be too much to consume for one post. I’ll separate it into 2 or 3 and voila! I end up with even more content.

 

How to Organize Social Media Posts

 

There are a lot of great ways to organize your social media captions and posts. My go to places are to write them in Notes in my phone, in Google Spreadsheets, or in Google Docs. There are obviously an infinite number of other options but these are the ones I like to use. Notes in my phone is great for me because I’m usually crafting my social media copy on the couch with a glass of wine. Or I do it in the app itself and just save it as a draft until I am ready to post it. Notes are nice just because you can save them there and be able to pull from them to use on other outlets as well like in your emails or in text marketing (which I think is super interesting and can’t wait to learn more about.) 

 

For clients, I use Google spreadsheets. I have tried a bunch of different ways over the years of organizing my social media captions with clients and spreadsheets has worked the best for me. I just create a super simple calendar. There is a column for the date, a column for the image that I link to a folder that has all the images in it, there is a column for the caption, a column for the hashtags, a column for engagement, and a column for stories. I just fill all of that out with the copy and it has worked like a charm.

 

How to Market on Social Media

 

There are lots of ways to market social media copywriting if you are selling it as a service of a copywriter. Say that ten times fast. There are a lot of ways to market it obviously, but you should start with leading by example. The more crafted, thoughtful and consistent your social media captions are, the better. And whatever that looks like to you is fine, consistent might mean once a week or consistent might mean twice a day, either works. But lead by example. If the copy on your pages is looking on point, then you are going to be showing your potential clients what you are capable of doing.

 

You can include social media copy as a service on our website. I like to do this by taking screenshots of my best social media posts. If you have great posts where the image looks really good and there is a great art copy relationship, and you just feel like you did great in that moment, go ahead and screen shot that and include it in your portfolio on your website. I have a folder for these so I can grab them as I see them happen. The nature of social media is so temporary, things tend to disappear or get pushed down in the feed and become hard to find. You also might not have the same client forever, but still want to use one of their posts from a  year ago. So just grab them as you see them and keep them for when you need to show an example of your work. That’s a great way to market this service.

 

Copywriting for social media is a great add on service and also potential for retainer work for copywriters. When you are onboarding a new client, you can have a conversation with them and see if social media copy is a need that they have. It is a huge pain point for so many entrepreneurs. They are all being told all day long that they have to have so much content online to market their business, blah blah blah, and it gets stressful and overwhelming. They don’t want to sit down to write down all those captions for the week. You can swoop in and take the opportunity to take that on for them and they will most likely be extremely grateful. 

 

Your agreement can look a bajillion different ways, but typically you are going to agree to a certain amount of posts per week. Give yourself a range, because sometimes people will get hung up on specific numbers. Say you agreed to five posts per week, but one week one of your posts is doing really well, you instead want to focus on engagement in that post to keep it going the next day rather than bury it with another post. You don’t want your client to be frustrated that you didn’t make those five specific posts. You want to be clear that your process is a strategy and that you aren’t just being neglectful. You are doing what works best and what serves them best. 

 

Sometimes it makes sense to post less and sometimes it makes sense to post more. Some weeks maybe you’ll make six posts, and some weeks you’ll post ten. They need to trust you, so this goes along with working with people who are in alignment with you and that respect your time and energy. There shouldn’t have to be too much over explaining once you are in your agreement together.  You shouldn’t have to feel nervous that they’ll be mad at you for missing a post, it should be more of a trusting relationship. And knowing of yourself that you are really good at what you do, and you are doing this with everyone’s best intention in mind. That way, if questions do come up, you won’t take it personally, you’re just going to explain your thinking behind your strategy or way of doing things. You’ll say this is why I did three posts this week instead of five and guess what? They’ll think you are super smart and understand why it makes so much sense to do what you did. You just have to put yourself in their shoes for a second and realize that they are probably just curious. I’m speaking from a personal place because I automatically assume that clients hate my work and are going to fire me when they ask questions. But they aren’t! They are literally just wondering, because you know way more about this work than they do. Questions and feedback like that are 99% of the time, just a sincere inquiry about what is going on. That is a great opportunity to open up that communication and get them to trust your work even more. It’s an opportunity to explain yourself and show your expertise. That way, the next time they see a shift in what they thought they were expecting from your deliverables, they’ll know and trust you are handling it and not worry at all.

 

Another way to market yourself as a social media copywriter, is to share your client wins on your own social media. If someone gets a lead, customer or client because of one of your posts, let the world know! This could look different ways. Let’s say they email you to let you know they just got a huge client from one of your posts and thank you in it. Screenshot that email and post it in your IG story. Ask permission to share it and block out any names or info that shouldn’t be shared, but then make that post work for you. Take screenshots of emails, take screenshots of stats, take screenshots of engagement, take screenshots of compliments. Save all these things and post them on your IG stories, then save those into a little highlight on your Instagram. That is a really fun way to show off your testimonials of your social media work. And on Facebook you can make an album to show off and share. Definitely share all of your client wins with everyone else, so that everyone knows how awesome you are at what you are doing.

 

Outsourcing

 

They are opportunities for outsourcing with social media copy. I still write my client captions, and do all the strategy, but I have outsourced the actual posting and engagement. Someone else goes in and pulls from the calendar and posts the image with the caption and hashtags. Then they have engagement instructions each day. Let’s say I am posting for someone who is an artist and they are posting an image of a beach in La Jolla. I’m going to have her go in and engage with different art galleries in La Jolla. That would be an engagement strategy and those will all be in the spreadsheet that I share with her. Another option is for you to do the strategy, but outsource the caption writing. There are a lot of blurred lines between copy and strategy. I love that, and one of my draws to copywriting is that I get to have my hands in strategy as well. You might want to just do the strategy for your social media clients and outsource the copywriting. Or you can outsource the strategy and hire a strategist, who is really in the know with all things social media, to help you. And then you get to just focus on the writing. It’s up to you, everything is flexible, do what feels best first and always. 

 

Everybody Wins

 

Those are my best tips for social media copywriting and excellent ways to use it as a marketable service. Most of it is simple and right at your fingertips and it’s a great way to gain clients and add services onto existing clients, then market yourself at the same time. Everybody wins. So use those awesome copywriting skills to grow business for your clients and yourself with the magic of social media marketing.

 

I highly recommend you check out The Cosmic Calling Podcast. It’s a wonderful astrology based show by Soulshine Astrology. Natalie Walstein is the career astrologer who hosts it. There are really fun topics like Crafting a Soul Fueled Signature Offering and she has really fun guests on the show. She has monthly forecasts, that I especially love. Go check that out for more soul aligned business tips.

 

If you want to connect with me and a group of copywriting ladies who love the woo woo stuff too. We are the modern day Peggy Olsons, if she were into crystals and stuff. Join the copywriting girls club on facebook! This is a great place to connect with other writers and business owners and ask questions, get feedback on your writing, and learn even more about using social media to grow your business. Join us HERE.

 

Come find me on Instagram to see exactly how I use all these tips for social media in my own business HERE.

 

And I have one more social media copywriting tip to send you off with. Repurpose your content! I have a “Spread Your Magic” repurposing cheat sheet that gives you 20+ Ways to Repurpose Your Soul-Driven Content. Use the stuff that you have already written all over multiple platforms. I give you a bunch of ideas on how to do that in this free guide. Grab your free copy HERE. 

 

Want to connect with other passionate female copywriters, grow your network to get new leads, improve your craft as a writer, and have a safe space to vent about clients? Join us in the Copywriting Girls Club! It’s our private girl gang on Facebook, and we would love to have you in there to share your zone of genius.