How to write electric social captions in less time
(Even if you don’t like to write about yourself)
Things that make us cringe:
Our Facebook statuses from the 2010s
The messages you send when you have a bit too much fun during girls night
Writing about ourselves and our businesses on social media
Now I can’t do much about the first two but I can help you with the third one. I’m afraid showing up on social media isn’t something you can wriggle out of as a business owner. Visibility is key to growth and there are millions of us scrolling through social media so it's a really accessible way to get your business out there.
But what do you say? You’re the listener, not the talker. You’re the calm mother-hen, not the loud wild child. You always help yourself before anyone else.
Let me put it this way. How are you supposed to help your ideal client unless you show up online? How are they supposed to know what you can do for them unless you tell them? How are they supposed to make an informed decision about whether to work with you or not unless you give them information about your business?
Tips for saving time while still showing up
So you’re onboard with showing up on social media and working through the cringe. You’ve just another barrier to overcome TIME. You need to find the time to write electric captions that work for your business instead of just filling the gaps in your posting schedule.
Here’s my efficient social media post writing routine that I use to write my own content and that of my clients.
The hardest part about writing is facing the blank page. Often we overthink what we’re writing because we’re physically typing it out and filling the blankness. This is how you build you post little by little so you can break through the fear.
Step 1
Brainstorm ideas for a month of content, considering what offers you’d like to promote and the key topics that help your audience. I suggest pen on paper so you can just let the ideas flow.
Step 2
Refine those ideas and put them into your posting schedule. This allows you to have a starting point and let it mull and develop in your mind as you do other things before sitting down to write.
Step 3
Come up with an opening line, call to action and 3-5 points you’d like to cover in the middle. This gives you a structure that makes every sentence you write intentional because you know what you’re working towards. No rambling here.
Step 4
Fill in the gaps by actually writing the post. You’re not starting from scratch so it shouldn’t be as difficult to get started. I recommend writing a few posts at a time because when you’re in the zone of writing the words flow a lot easier compared to stopping and starting.
Step 5
Leave what you have written for at least 24 hours if possible. This allows you to get a fresher perspective on what you’ve written. Our brains are very clever so often when reading something we’ve written, we see what we think we’ve written instead of what we’ve actually written. Our brains glaze over the mistakes. Clever but not very helpful when trying to write high quality content.
Step 6
Only review each post twice. You have to give yourself a deadline, otherwise you’ll keep editing and editing until the words lose meaning. My top tip for the final edit when you need to pick up on any typos is to listen to what you’ve written. You can either speak it aloud or use a tool that will read out the text for you. That’s how you pick up on the words that are words but not the word you meant so it’s not picked up by spellchecker.
That’s it. My 6 step process for writing social captions efficiently. Take as long between these steps as possible so you have the capacity to process what you’re writing and come up with ideas, from overarching themes to two word phrases.
Tips for writing captions your audience will love
Now you know how to write social captions in a way that doesn’t take over your life, you’re probably thinking “But how do I make it good good. I want to show up as my best, not half-arsed.” Luckily I’ve got some tips for that too.
Again you don’t need to overthink what you write in your posts. Often that leads you to getting totally off track and leaving your audience feeling lost. Keep it simple and effective. And most importantly fun! If you’re having a good time, your audience will pick up on those good vibes and be attracted to your business. Good vibes attract good vibes, right?
Track your success
What posts actually do better than others? Unless you’re actually monitoring the numbers, all you’re doing is guessing. I know sometimes it can feel uncomfortable to look at the statistics because it feels superficial and like a judgment of ourselves.
Try this mindset. Numbers don’t tell the whole story. Numbers are a starting point that can give you an idea of what your audience responds to most. Only look at your numbers so you know what does good for you. What’s working for anyone else doesn’t matter because you can’t copy and paste strategies. Your relationship with your audience is unique so concentrate on that.
If a post does well for you, look for the pattern of why and learn from it in your future posts. That’s how you get better and better. Also if a post didn’t do as well as you’d like, by tracking patterns of success you know how you could edit it to potentially do better next time.
Write for the individual
On the other hand, social media makes it very obvious how many people are reading your posts and that’s not the most helpful perspective to write in. One to one conversations are so much more powerful than speaking as an expert to a crowd. It hits us harder if we feel like the person on the other side of the post is talking to us personally.
We want to feel seen. We want to feel understood. We want to belong. By writing to the individual, we can achieve that. Use ‘you’ and ‘I’ to overcome the distance that social media can create, particularly when hitting on emotional touchpoints that motivate your audience to take action.
Make it skimmable
Honestly, we don’t have time to read every caption in our feed. Even every caption of our favourite accounts. So as content consumers, we are constantly making the decision of whether to read something fully or not. Make it as easy as possible for your audience to make that decision.
If they don’t immediately get the impression that your post will help them in some way, they’ll scroll on. It’s a social media post so the stakes are pretty low. It’s not a decision we’re going to spend ages debating.
This is where formatting is super important. Makeshift ‘subheadings’ and bullet points draws the eye of your audience to the information-packed parts of your post. Then if they see it’s about something that interests them, they’ll read the post properly.
Get more help now!
Social media marketing is a journey. The more you write and the more you read about how to write well, the better you’ll get. You don’t stand still and that’s the fun part. There’s always something new to try.
So if you don’t want your progress to end here, check out my free guide 7 Writing Techniques for Vibrant Captions. You’ll learn about super simple techniques you can add into your captions to spice them up a bit so it’s more interesting for you to write and your audience to read.
Give it a read and tag me in the comments when you use one of the techniques I suggested so I can give the post some love.