Entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and marketers often ask the same question in today’s digital age: “How can I stand out among other accounts?”
Social media is an effective marketing tool. It’s been used by big brands like Wendys to become pop-culture icons. Small businesses can also use it to make a name for themselves in their industry without spending a lot of money on marketing.
In 2022, however, social media will be used by 3.96 billion people. On average, users consume content from 6.6 platforms daily and spend 2 hours and 25 mins on social media.
Social media is saturated in content, making it difficult to stand out.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is the answer. SEO will help you rank higher in search results and attract people’s attention.
What is SEO for social media? Continue reading.
12 SEO writing tips for social media
You may associate SEO with content marketing on landing pages and blogs. It can do much more than that.
To find new accounts to follow, 45 percent of consumers use discovery tools such as TikTok’s For You or Instagram’s Explore pages. These algorithms use social media to curate content based on the caption, hashtags and engagement with the post.
Why?
Algorithms aim to keep users interested and engaged so that they consume more content and see more ads. You will rank higher if you write content that appeals (also known as SEO content).
Let’s take a look at twelve tips for writing great social media captions.
1. Use keywords in your captions
Keywords are a key component of any social media SEO strategy. To understand your post’s content, algorithms look at specific keywords in the post. It then presents your post to people who are searching for similar keywords.
If you search for “google search”, the algorithm will recognize that searchers searching for “google” and “learn more about search engine result pages” might find your posts of interest.
These keywords are actually two different types of keywords. This example shows that “google Search” is your primary keyword (the keyword you want to rank for) and “learn more about search engine result pages” is a long tail keyword (a keyword that is used in niche searches).
You can also use keywords such as:
- Keywords with short tails like “google”,
- Keywords like “search engine ranking” are Latent Semantic keywords (LSI).
- Keywords that are competitive with “google alternatives”
- Geo-targeted keywords such as “how to get more traffic from New York”
While you should include many different types of keywords, keyword stuffing is not recommended.
Keyword stuffing refers to the use of a large number of keywords inorganically and unnaturally. Stuffing can damage your SEO as it makes your posts look unnatural and inorganic, which will cause people to not engage with them.
You don’t have to be a natural at keywords.
MarketMuse, Clearscope and SurferSEO allow marketers to optimize their captions for keywords. These tools scan your text to suggest keywords that you can add.
2. Tag people and pages you like
Search engines pay more attention to keywords than just keywords. Algorithms look for signs that a particular post will receive a lot of attention (engagement = ad revenues). Popular pages are more popular than others, so tagging someone or a page with a large audience will increase your post’s performance.
You don’t want random accounts to be included in your captions. They will appear spammy. Instead, find mutually beneficial ways to collaborate with trending account.
You could, for example, collaborate with an influencer like Botani Skincare. Botani Skincare collaborated with influencer Gigi Pies to create a testimonial for Instagram. Botani Skincare tagged Gigi on Instagram and featured her in this image.
Source:Instagram
This was a smart decision, since the post received significantly more attention than Botani’s average posts. It was also featured on many users’ Explore pages.
Consider these factors when choosing a partner page:
- Relevance = Is your content in line with the content of your potential partner?
- Audience = Do you have a target audience?
- Reach = Can your potential collaborator help you increase your reach?
Collaboration will be more successful if you are aligned with your collaborator.
3. Post UGC
You don’t have to partner only with influencers on social media. Smart brands use User-Generated Content (UGC), which refers to content created by customers and followers about your brand.
UGC marketing is an effective SEO strategy as it increases engagement. Social media algorithms consider audience engagement crucial because it assumes that posts with more engagement are more appealing. They rank them higher so that more people can see them.
Follow Dorito’s example to leverage UGC.
Doritos encourages users to use the hashtag #anotherlevel with the tag @doritos. Doritos’ social media staff engages with the poster to increase engagement and propel it to Instagram’s Explore.
Doritos also curates the best UGC on an album called “Fan Friday.” This album encourages more people to post posters and celebrates creativity.
Source: Insta
4. Caption links that can be used as a shoppable link
Digital marketers have traditionally used social media to attract leads into their sales funnel or “sales pipeline”. Although this is a clever approach, you run the risk of losing people because they will need to leave your app to purchase.
Shoppable links make this a non-issue.
Shoppable links allow people to shop online by simply clicking on a catalog. Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and Instagram all offer shoppable links. Other platforms will soon follow suit.
Because social media platforms are aware of the interest in posts with shoppable links, they rank well. 48% of internet users aged 18-34 have bought something online or do it regularly. This is the largest group of Instagram and Facebook users.
This post by Ritual Cosmetics is a great example of a post that includes a shoppable hyperlink. It is visually appealing and encourages people to buy the products.
Source :Instagram
5. Optimize your profile
You can optimize your social media posts, but that’s not all. A well-designed profile will help you rank higher, since you can use keywords, hashtags and links to your advantage.
Add:
- Your brand name
- A brief description with keywords
- 1 – 3 relevant hashtags
- If you wish to include multiple links, a website link or a LinkTree URL
- If you’re a brick-and-mortar business, contact details or your business address
- Other social media channels are linked
Be aware that every social media platform has its own unique features. Instagram allows you to use 150 characters, Facebook 1,300 characters and Twitter 280 characters.
Do not let the character limit discourage you. It is possible to do a lot even with very little. See Sephora’s bio.
Source :Instagram
6. Add website backlinks
This tip is fairly self-explanatory so we’ll keep this short. Backlinks in your captions can drive more traffic to your site, which will increase your website’s rank in search engines.
These are the best practices for placing backlinks
- Give people a reason for clicking the link
- Only select relevant links
- If the link is too long, you can use a URL shortener
- To measure traffic, track your link
These tips can be easily integrated into your blog post. It may seem difficult at first. Here’s how Papier did this:
Source:Facebook
7. High-quality content is possible
Although it may seem obvious to create high-quality content, you’d be amazed at how many brands produce low-quality, spammy content expecting it to rank well. Set quality standards for your posts to avoid falling into this trap.
Ask yourself:
- Are there spelling or grammar mistakes?
- Is there continuity error?
- Did you learn anything from this article?
- Would you like to be a follower?
- Is there an animation, video or infographic in this post that grabs attention?
- Is the post inspiring people to leave comments?
Also, look for content from your competitors and strive to be better.
8. Use a friendly, conversational tone
When brands joined social media, things got awkward. Marketers posted too formal, restricted, and formulaic posts. They didn’t fit in with the rest of the posts.
Many brands who succeed on social media today know that the key to success is the tone of the post. People love posts that are creative, casual and entertaining. They get more engagement and rank higher.
To get people’s attention, you don’t have to be funny or chummy. Think “friendly” instead of “conversational” to get people’s attention.
Take a look at the posts below from Wendys for some inspiration on tone. The first post is from 2010, and it looks quite strange. The second is from 2022. It walks well between “brand” & “friend”.
Source:Wayback Computer
Source:Twitter
9. Video can help you to improve your written content
When creating social media content, many marketers create well-researched, informative, and lengthy captions. These captions can be artful, but they can also backfire because text doesn’t engage people as much as content with audio or visual elements.
Sometimes, it is best to make your content educational.
This post by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows what video can do.
WHO has broken down key points for people to understand an extremely complex topic (antimicrobial resistant). WHO then added sound effects and animations to the video, as well as footage from Dr. Lianne Gönsalves, to make it educational and entertaining.
Source: Insta
Video content will be a powerful content strategy in 2022 as it accounts for 82% internet traffic. It would be smart to take advantage of it.
10. Caption your video with a hook
A hook is a catchy sentence that grabs attention of someone and encourages them to click on your posts. Hooks are an excellent SEO tool as they encourage audience engagement.
There are many hooks that you can use on your social media, including:
- Questions
- Hashtags
- Jokes
- Get Quotes
- Trivia questions
- Statistic
- An appeal to emotion
- A call to the audience (e.g. “Hello, social media marketers”)
Ask yourself this question when choosing the right hook: “If I were one (brand)’s followers, which hook would grab my attention?” It is important to take into account your audience’s preferences. A joke that is too funny for some may be humorous to others, but it can offend many.
Below is a great example for hooks that are targeted at a specific audience.
Source:Instagram
11. As FAQs, use long-tail keywords
In the “1.” section, we first discussed long-tail keywords. Use keywords in your captions. Recall that long-tail keywords are more specific keywords that people search for when they’re getting ready to purchase something.
They can be used to increase traffic and close sales with customers because they get a strong response.
Long-tail keywords can be used in Frequently Asked Questions within the caption text or heading. This is one of the most creative ways to use them. The toilet paper company Who Gives a Crap shared the video “How to make eco-friendly diaper wipes” on Facebook.
Source:Facebook
This post contains several keywords with long tails, such as “eco-friendly baby wipes” or “how to make eco friendly baby wipes”.
These keywords allowed the post to circulate on Facebook and rank well on Google. It’s listed below as a video suggestion in the search for “make eco-friendly diapers”.
This ranking drives traffic to Who Gives A Crap’s website and boosts its reach. The post had 17K views as of early 2022 and more than 300 reactions.
12. Optimize your CTAs
Ever clicked on a link only to find it spammy? Perhaps the link was not correctly labeled or contained ALL CAPS. Or the word “free” was used three times in succession.
No matter the reason, someone said “Don’t click this.” When you write captions for social media, it is important to not provoke that feeling in your readers.
How?
Optimize your anchor text with:
- Keep it between 1 and 5 words
- Using descriptive phrases
- Spammy words should be avoided
- Using consistent formatting
- It will naturally be incorporated into your caption
- Make sure you’re clear about the link to which you’re linking
The anchor text that is behind the CTA should not be the only thing you optimize. You will also need to “wow” people once they arrive at your site in order to keep them there. To keep them interested and close the deal, create a landing page.
Optimize your social media performance using SEO
Facebook (2.89 billion users), YouTube (2.29 billion users) and Instagram (1.39 trillion users) are the three largest social media platforms. This is a lot of posts and people.
These writing tips will help you stand out from the crowd.
- Use keywords
- Optimize your profile
- In your posts, include FAQS, hooks, and videos
- Shoppable links and optimized CTAs are a great way to sell
You must also create engaging, high-quality content that people want to share. To be successful in social media, you must entertain your target audience.
Scoop.it Blog published the post SEO Writing Tips to Boost Your Social Media.
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