How a Copywriter Can Improve Your Social Media Efforts

"I'd probably start by hiring a writer." -- Gary Vaynerchuk on a February 2021 episode of his podcast, advising someone on building their social media team.

 This quote is no small endorsement of copywriters as a profession. There is a reason why Vaynerchuk places the value of a good copywriter at the top of the hierarchy of a dedicated social media team.

 The following is a list of some key attributes that a good copywriter brings to the table.

A Copywriter Executes Based on Strategy

In marketing, execution is predicated on two things: a Strategic Marketing Plan to guide overall messaging strategy across all efforts and the creative brief to guide the specific tactics used in a particular campaign or its individual elements.

 The copywriter goes in knowing the specific outcome desired from a piece and can craft a message and voice that fits seamlessly within the scope of an overarching campaign.

A Copywriter Creates With Context in Mind

 The best marketing exists symbioticaly within the context of the medium in which it appears, while still holding true to the message and voice of the governing campaign to which it belongs.

Just as an ad in a campaign for a piece of exercise equipment in Men's Health would differ greatly from an ad for the same in Self Magazine, the wording and format of content that works in Facebook is different from what works on LinkedIn or TikTok, even if the core message and the desired result are the same.

A Copywriter is a Conceptual Thinker

 A good copywriter is more than just a stringer-together of words. He or she understands how the whole of a piece—words, art direction, context and the psychology of the audience work together to influence the consumer of the content.

Social media is a marketplace of ideas. A crowded marketplace. You want to make sure your social content is sure of propose and free of fluff (unless that fluff is, in fact, is purpose).

A Copywriter Translates Emotion Into Motion

 There's an age-old formula in copywriting circles for leading the target into the correct mindset needed to take the desired action: AIDA

•  Attention

• Interest

• Desire

• Action

 That action might be to buy something, to click through to a website, or share information with a friend or colleague. Or it might simply be to smile the next time you think about the brand.

 But every campaign should have an overarching objective and every individual part of the campaign should be devoted to a single action you want to elicit from the reader, listener or viewer.

 A Copywriter is Used to Translating an Idea Across Media

 This ties in with contextualization. Users behave differently on Instagram than they do on Facebook or YouTube. LinkedIn users have different expectations than TikTok-ers… even if they're the same person.

 Understanding the audience and their expectations within a given platform is critical to influencing them to take and action. You don't approach a person at their doctor’s office to try a fun new dance move with you and you wouldn't swim up to someone in the water and ask them to try your new potato chip.

 Those actions would be incongruous with those settings. But because it's such a simple thing to create a single post and share it among platforms, that happens all the time in social media.

 Hiring a copywriter will help ensure your social media content fits seamlessly into your business goals, from creating a plan that integrated into you strategic marketing plan to executing elements that create the specific actions and outcomes your looking for… including how to know what those actions should be on which platforms, and when.

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 Danny Thompson is an independent copywriter with 20 years of experience agency-side,  client-side and publisher-side. If you'd like to discuss how you can use social media to build a targeted audience, and then effectively advertise to that audience, drop an InMail, email Danny@lefthandedwriter.com or visit LeftHandedWriter.com