7 Tips to Master Short-Form Content on Social Media

Table of Contents

• 7 Essential Tips to Create Short-Form Content
• Key Takeaways 
• Conclusion 
• FAQs

These days, many brands rely on social media as a marketing strategy. For B2C companies, social media brings immense traffic and traction. And what guarantees success on social media? Short-form content. 

Social media marketers have mastered the art of conveying multiple emotions within a few words. This art is now known as short-form content marketing. It takes a witty copywriter to carry forward this art and bring amazing results for a company. 

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7 Essential Tips to Create Short-Form Content

We have researched and looked into the backgrounds of some of these copywriters and the methods they employ to get the best results. And we have come up with seven short-form writing tips that will be quite useful if you want to improve your short-form digital content writing skills. They are listed below.

1. Invest time in audience research

Social media posts generally tend to follow a pattern, which means, a good copywriter would do proper research on what their target audience is. This involves looking at data through analytics dashboards. Most of these have insights on demographics, age groups, geography, etc., which can be useful in writing posts your audience wants. 

For example, if your research shows that the most recent visitors on your social media page have been between the ages of 18-25, knowing what’s trending for this age group can be helpful in writing short-form content that brings maximum traction. 

2. Encourage audience participation

Another great thing you can do through short-form digital content is asking the audience to participate as well. Using hashtags or one-liners, ask the audience to respond to and engage with your content. 

Here’s the official Twitter account of Adobe Lightroom, asking its followers to participate in a thread. Such initiatives encourage engagement and keep the audience coming back for more. 

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3. Build your voice

Building your brand’s voice on social media is more important than it may seem. While it is okay to get carried away once in a while and do what the audience wants, not deviating from your tone and voice can have a positive impact. 

Let’s suppose your primary content writer is leaving the team: would they take the voice away with them? That is a possibility, which is why it is important to establish brand guidelines that follow a uniform voice and tone. You can start by advising the writers in your team to never deviate from the voice that you have decided on for your brand.

The advantage of doing this is, without even reading the brand name, consumers will be able to identify your short-form content on social media. 

4. Keep it positive and conversational

Short-form writing works best when it is positive in nature, which means that it must use elements like humor, fun, etc., to engage the reader. This is why brands like Wendy’s strike a chord with their audience: thanks to their never-ending banter and witty replies. People look forward to their posts and provide responses as much as possible. 

Nobody wants to open their social media feeds to find posts that are plain and do not invoke any joy. This is why it’s important to be creative and keep your posts positive.

5. The lesser, the better

Keeping social media posts short and sweet is definitely the key to gaining traction. When a social media user switches on an app, they are looking for some form of instant gratification, an escape that can take them away from their everyday life. This is why it’s important to keep your social media copy short and simple, something that is effortless to read and gives the information they need quickly and without much effort. 

6. Insert visual media

Another great tip for short-form content marketing is to make use of visual media such as images, GIFs, and videos in your social media copy. This will make it much easier for the user to interact and engage with your post. Visual media sells better than plain text, because of the obvious reason: most people prefer looking at interesting visuals to simply reading text. So make sure to include visual media in your social media marketing strategy. 

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7. Use a call-to-action

Social media content write-ups are incomplete without a call-to-action (CTA), because at the end of the day, the goal is to get conversions through your post. Always add a CTA asking the consumer to take the next step, whether it is downloading something or clicking on a landing page. 

Key Takeaways

• Social media marketers have mastered the art of conveying multiple emotions within a few words, and now this art is known as short form content marketing.
• A good copywriter would do proper research on what the target audience is.
• Building your brand’s social media voice is more important than anything else.
• Short-form content works best when it is positive in nature, which means that it should contain fun elements.
• Keeping social media posts short and sweet is definitely the key to gaining traction and generating leads. 
• Another great tip is to make use of visual media such as images, GIFs, and videos in your short-form content as much as possible. Also make sure to use brief but powerful captions.

Conclusion

Creating short-form content for social media is an art. With social media becoming such a challenging and competitive field of late, it is crucial to know how to create content that sells. Along with these tips, we recommend keeping a lookout for short-form content marketing trends, and following what other brands are doing online.

FAQs