I see a lot of social media, some good and some bad, so I have put together a top 10 of things you can do to improve your social media content. These tips works for both business and personal accounts, but I am mainly going to focus on how to edit engaging content.
Tip 1 – Grammar
Social Media is your “shop window” and can often be the first engagement someone has with you or your business. It’s important therefore that every single thing you post has good grammar and spelling. Not only does it look better, it’s distracting if it’s wrong.
Tip 2 – Font
Did you know that some fonts are easier to read than others. In particular if someone has Dyslexia then Serif fonts are much more difficult to tackle than Sans Serif fonts.
Tip 3 – Make it Catchy
People often make the mistake of putting in too much information when advertising something in their social media. Here’s my rule for getting the balance right.
No more than 4 pieces of information in a single post and provide a link or click through for further information.
(C) gilliblogs 2019
I use this rule as most people visit an image for literally 2-3 seconds before they click off. Also, most people can remember just 4 pieces of information quickly and so it’s paramount that the 4 you post are the important ones.
e.g. Event Title, Event Date, Event Time, Event Location.
There is bound to be more information that’s important, but that is what the click through is for.
Tip 4 – Photos of People
My top tip for taking photos of people is that the best ones are the ones where people are engaged in activity. Your subjects don’t always have to be looking at the camera, but they need to be doing something. My lovely ex-colleague and general social media GURU @jessalbone is fab at this and you only have to look at the Merlin Annual Pass Socials to see what I mean!
Pro Tip – If you are publishing photos of people, always make sure you have permission first.
Tip 5 – Accessibility
Newsflash, people with disabilities use social media too!
There are a few things you can do on social media to help people with disabilities engage with you or your business. Firstly, you can use Tip 1 and make sure things are spelled correctly and of course make sense. Did you know that if someone uses British Sign Language, then THIS is their first language and not English. Good spelling and clear English is therefore really important when getting a message across.
Also, there are options on most social media platforms for you to add “Alternative Text” to a photo. This is an option that you can turn on which will allow you to add a description to a photo so that when people with visual impairments have screen reading software on their devices, it will tell them what the photo depicts.
Tip 6 – Make it Move
OK, so this tip can really help make your content much more engaging, as when I say “Make it Move” I mean use short videos or Boomerangs. There are features in Instagram, Facebook and Twitter which will allow you to create short and fun videos for free with lots of fun options.
However, you could just keep it simple by showing a quick 10 second highlight or short video of an event to give people an idea of what you do or just what happened. A good example of this was the campaign used around the recent BBC series, Line of Duty.
Name a more iconic line. #LineOfDuty pic.twitter.com/DcPuLMa6Gq
— BBC One (@BBCOne) May 5, 2019
Tip 7 – Get your profile right
One thing that drives me a bit mad is when I see an account on social media of a business that sounds cool, only for me to check their profile and it tells me nothing.
Pro tip – People always want to know the basics about your business e.g. what you do, where you are, when are you open.
Without the basics, your “shop front” becomes static and your engagements will be massively reduced.
Tip 8 – Engage with your followers
Very often, people treat their social media as a one way street. They post regular content, but don’t often engage with their followers. What do I mean by engagement?
- Answer all questions honestly and factually. Be polite at all times, everything is public and not easily removed.
- Make sure you thank people for Reposting things, they have given you a free advert!
- Ask questions to promote engagement. For example…
THREE HOURS TO GO! What style of variety act are you hoping to see on #BGT tonight? 👀🤔🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/jEyELRYl1Z
— Britain's Got Talent (@BGT) May 11, 2019
Tip 9 – Remain positive
We all know the internet can be as horrible as it can be fun, and people are not always polite but that shouldn’t mean that you have to be anything other than positive.
Even if someone is being horrible to you on your socials, remain calm and block if you need to. Remember that social media is your shop window and no-one needs to see you having a row about a delayed order or a cold lunch.
Tip 10 – Enjoy yourself
This is a classic, but very true thing, if you enjoy your engagement with social media, this will come across and people will return daily to see what you post. Post often and positively and people will actively search you out.
Well that’s it! Hope that’s helped and please do leave a comment below or on any of my socials 💗
G x
