There’s no better time to start honing your social media skills than today—an era defined by social media and short attention spans.

Generally, in relation to traditional forms of media, the rules remain the same—make sure your copy is interesting and engaging, the message has to be clever and interesting. But social media is a completely different ball game. Not only are user attention spans shorter on these platforms, it also requires anything you publish to be shorter and more succinct.

For all its challenges however, there are also payoffs—near instant feedback, an opportunity to directly engage your consumers, and directly measurable results that help boost your ecommerce site’s conversions. And to leverage on these advantages, try out these essential social media tips below:

1. Tap into your audience’s emotions

Consider the purpose of a social media status update. It doesn’t matter if it’s on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+–it’s a way to connect with friends and acquaintances. This means that any update that goes up is typically personal and emotional.

Posts that elicit reactions and emotions from your followers are the ones that get the most engagement. And that almost always depends on how you say things.

• Avoid writing your posts like you would a newspaper headline—remember that you have tap into your reader’s emotions.
• Try to write your posts in a casual and conversational manner to connect better with your followers.
• Address your audience directly so that they feel like it’s calling out to them directly.
• Try adding a question at the end so that you can prompt a discussion.
• Add emojis or even strategically placed punctuation marks—especially if you’re trying to reach a younger audience.

2. Your best work-around for character limits? Images.

One of the key elements that make social media more engaging is its versatility. But a clear limitation that most marketers encounter is its character count. Smart social media marketers however have since learned to use images to work around this. As they say, pictures are worth a thousand words.

• In instances where you are limited to 140 characters (as it is with Twitter), attach an image instead.
• Use infographics or charts if you want to convey key information.
• Put effort behind the image that you’re posting. If you’re trying to sell a product, include a nice image of the product that you are selling and make sure you include a link back to your site on your post.
• Make sure the images you use are consistent with your brand personality. So regardless of what platform you use, your audience’s brand recall is strongly tied to your business.
• Add a logo or watermark to your images to directly associate your images with your actual website.

3. Invoke curiosity

Admittedly, you can’t really say much in a social media post. Not all topics are appropriate for a Facebook or Twitter post. The goal therefore is to prompt enough interest with a simple one or two sentence post so that they are compelled to click on a link that leads back to your blog post, or a product page.

• Try to pique your audience’s attention with a quote, a question, or even interesting facts and statistics so that people notice your post.
• Be conscious of your objective. The goal is to drive your audience back to your site. All your efforts would be useless if you are unable to bring them back to your website where you can showcase more of your product or service.
• Posts that invoke curiosity among readers get shared more—and more shares means more opportunity to drive people to visit your site and increase conversions.
• Announcements exclusive to followers are also a good way to grab attention and lead to conversions.
• Write your copy in such a way that it grabs their attention—but avoid being clickbait-y as these tend to turn people off.

Remember…

Engagement on social media requires content, whether visual or written, that adds value to your users. On top of that, it has to be fun, engaging and interesting. These tips should certainly help you hone your social media skills so that you start seeing more people visiting your site.

Try it out and see. Once you do, we’d love to hear how well it worked for you. Leave us a comment below and tell us all about it.

And if you need help raising your conversions, get in touch with us today to see how we can work together and deliver the numbers you need.