It is difficult to stay up to date with all the latest techniques of social media posting. In this ever changing world of good blogging practices, you might have just learned the art of crafting short and sassy posts when a growing trend appears wanting longer posts for engaging the reader experiences better. But do not be discourages, posting long posts can be done like a pro without much effort and you will reap the benefits of your hard work for sure.
Tweets and Google headlines need limited number of characters, but writing posts is important for some social media platforms like the Facebook, which encourage longer word counts. The bottom line is the word count is secondary, what values the most is the valuable content in the post. There are few standard practices which will help you create that killer social media post, they are:
- Creating posts worth sharing
Create posts worth sharing, the same strategies can be used as for shorter posts. A post worth sharing is the one which others believe has enough value in it to share it with their friends and colleagues. For long posts you can create that shareable factor by
- Trust building – long posts must have a lot of flexibility. It has to include citations and references, this sharing of expert sources will provide credibility to your post.
- Data sharing- for more credibility, let the statistics and the number speak for themselves regardless of your expertise. Find creative ways of information presentation.
- Mobile friendly- you cannot expect your content to go viral if you do not enable it to be viewed and shared on the mobile web. With increasing number of mobile phone users, you must make your post mobile friendly.
- Valuable content
Your posts must contain valuable content. For example twitter posts have a very short lifespan when compared to other social media. So you have to ensure that your content is worth the time of your followers. You must show people that you want to share your experiences. You must know who your target audiences are, and know the info they are looking for. They would like to know what you are thinking, so show them where you stand be confident in your knowledge and what you post.
- Purpose
When you are posting something on social media remember that your post must have a purpose instead of just promoting your brand. You have to show your audience that you are an expert and you definitely care about your audience. When you are writing lengthy posts it can be a tough task staying on topic. So to maintain your idea of writing on purpose, you have to post with the audience in mind, know and understand the questions and concerns your audience might have and why they are using the social media.
- Headlines
Whether you are creating short posts or long ones, you need to have good headlines. Headlines rule in social media posts. If you desire great social media shares then you must create compelling headlines.
- Lengthy posts
Longer posts have the power of long tail keywords. Also lengthy posts have the chance of using a wide range of long tail keywords. This will help in a good performance in search queries for the semantically related keywords, and just mere matches. Also longer content will create more back links and there will be more shares. There is a good relationship between the large word content and increased back links, which increases search engine optimization and conversions. Also there is a correlation between social media sharing and the word count. A study showed that the post sharing have doubled on LinkedIn and Facebook when the word count increased from 400 to 1500.
- Use wide and clear images
You can attract your audience better and grab their attention in longer posts with info graphics, interesting pictures and screenshots. Ensure that the posts are of high quality and are relevant to your post for visually stimulating the engagement of your audience. According to a study, using images on Facebook pages increased shares by 53% over the average post, and these posts have increased comment rate by 104%.
- Do not repeat
When you are posting lengthy posts, there might be chances of falling into the trap of repeating your ideas when your intention is to hit a specific word count. Do not fill up your ideas with filler words and other content. When you are satisfied with what you have got, you must stop writing. When you are done writing, you must do intensive editing to the content.
- Share buttons
You have to make it easy for your audience to share your posts by placing the social media share buttons at the bottom of all your posts and pages. When you have longer posts then your readers will be less likely to scroll up and click on the share button at the top. Therefore, for longer posts place the share button at the bottom of the page.
- Post formatting
The overall presentation of your post has to be good. If your post is just one big mass of txt without any headers, then the post loses scan ability which readers love. Just as people do not like sharing an ugly photo, they will be highly unlikely to share an ugly post too. A clean layout with emphasis on your post will help in ensuring that your post readers will share the content.
- Stay calm and post regularly
You must have a clear idea about how often you must post, or repost your content. You must check on the analytic coming out of your posts. As social media is constantly changing, repost in the past may bring in more leads than the original post did in the past. You must be aware of the trends and any interesting data and take advantage of them.
These are just a few tips and tricks to write a rocking social media post and to make yourself the king of social media posting.
