Is your social media messaging on point?
Food for thought: businesses bounce between dozens of engagements per day.
Posts. Comments. DMs. For some brands, it’s a constant back-and-forth.
But given how quickly social comms can move, it’s easy to overlook what you say and how you say it.
Thing is, even the shortest messages you publish can have a big impact on your audience. From your brand’s values to the value your business provides, you can’t afford to ignore your social media messaging.
In this guide, we’ll cover why social media messaging matters so much and best practices for interacting with customers.
What is social media messaging?
Social media messaging refers to how you communicate with your social audience (think: followers, fans, customers and prospects).
There are two main elements of social media messaging:
- How to communicate your voice, values and insights to customers specific to your social presence
- How you deliver the messages above
Think about how you speak to customers can vary so much from channel to channel. Chances are there’s some overlap between your social followers, email list and organic traffic. That said, each of these audiences also has varying levels of awareness and familiarity with your brand.
Consider also that social media messaging is totally different from platform to platform. For example, Instagram and TikTok lend themselves to short-form, off-the-cuff communication that’s informal. This contrasts with “professional” channels like LinkedIn or communicating customer service via Twitter or Facebook.
Social media messaging also includes the social media features you use to communicate with your audience. This includes:
- Posts
- Captions
- Comments (and comment threads)
- DMs and private messages
Social media messaging vs. marketing messaging vs. brand voice
Many marketers understandably confuse the concept of social messaging with marketing messaging or brand voice.
The reality? These represent three totally different (but equally important) pieces of your company’s communication strategy.
Before we break down the best practices of social media messaging, let’s make a quick distinction:
- Marketing messaging refers to how a brand communicates its mission and the value of its products to consumers on a larger scale.
- Brand voice refers to your personality as reflected by your tone and word choice (think: humorous, informal, formal and/or professional).
- Social media messaging takes the concepts above and packages them concisely into posts, captions, comments and DMs.
Marketers should put all of these under the microscope to make sure they’re sending the right signal to customers.
Doing so can help you stand out from the crowd and ensure that your audience understands why they should listen to you. These elements all influence your content strategy as well.
How to beat the 5 most common challenges of social media messaging
How do you know if you’ve mastered the art of social media messaging?
Good question! Measuring success with messaging can be tricky, but here’s a good place to start:
- Engagement rate, signaling whether your content strategy and voice actually drive your audience to interact.
- Customer sentiment, highlighting whether people are happy, unhappy or indifferent to your messaging.
- Messages (or comments) per day, ensuring that you actually have a dialogue with your audience.
Getting your social messaging right often requires some trial and error. This is especially true for up-and-coming brands or companies trying to juggle multiple social platforms.
Below we’ve broken down five of the most common challenges associated with social media messaging and how to overcome each of them.
Limited characters counts
Trust us: we understand how tough it is so what you need to say in just a handful of characters. Dealing with call-outs, tear-downs and serious customer concerns feels particularly daunting on social media.
Solution: Don’t be afraid to shift communication to another platform. Remember: social media customer service and support don’t only have to happen on social media. Getting people in your inbox, on the phone or to your help desk is probably going to be more proactive than social-only support.
Consistent messaging among colleagues
Sticking to your brand’s single voice can be tough when you have multiple employees behind it. Delighting customers and handling concerns should be something that everyone feels comfortable doing.
Solution: For starters, make sure that your team is sticking to a style guide. Anything you can do to reinforce your brand’s values and cultures internally is also a plus. If you’re using a tool like Sprout, consider setting up approvals for social messages to ensure they’re always seen by a second set of eyes.
Driving meaningful conversations
If you’ve been sweating over your organic engagement rate these days, you’re not alone.
Still, that’s no excuse to talk at your audience instead of having conversations with them. Social media messaging is about responding and reacting. Each comment and message is an opportunity to learn more about what your customers want. Those moments don’t happen by default.
Solution: Post questions and prompts that encourage direct responses from your followers (see below). Likewise, regularly reply to comments to show your audience that you want to have a dialogue. Keep a close eye on your notifications and strive to respond promptly.
Making your messaging stand out
Being run-of-the-mill won’t do your brand any favors on social media. Beyond your brand voice, staying a step ahead of trends is one of the best ways to stand out from the crowd. From breaking news to the latest meme formats, it’s crucial to keep your ear to the ground.
Solution: Trendspotting and social listening can confirm what your audience is buzzing about without any second-guessing. Likewise, conduct a competitive analysis to see how you can tweak your message versus your competitor’s (think: tone, types of content).
Managing messages between platforms
Again, messaging isn’t one-size-fits-all across social media.
That doesn’t mean that you need to necessarily write every single social media message from scratch. Doing so is a massive time-sink. Still, you’re on the hook for making sure each message fits the appropriate format and character count for any given network.
Solution: Use a publishing platform like Sprout Social to make quick tweaks when you’re cross-posting. Rather than manually writing your messages, you can manage your assets and captions side-by-side. This also gives you extra time to proof and approve your messages if you need it.
Social media messaging strategies by platform
According to the Sprout Social Index™, the top five reasons people follow brands on social media for all networks are to:
- Learn about new products and services (57%)
- Stay up to date on company news (47%)
- Learn about promotions or discounts (40%)
- Be entertained (40%)
- Be educated (34%)
And so your social media messaging strategy should cover these points at some level.
But as noted earlier, every platform is different when it comes to which messages resonate.
To wrap things up, we’ll break down platform-by-platform best practices based on recent research and social media demographics.
Personality and personal connections should be your priority on Instagram.
Whether you’re warm and welcoming or just want to crack jokes, make your account feel like it’s being run by a human and not a bot.
According to recent Instagram statistics, the platform remains a hub for social shopping and influencer marketing. Beyond your human side, communicating affordability and ease of use is important when discussing products.
Facebook is a mixed bag when it comes to messaging.
Consider that two-thirds of adults consume their news through Facebook. Timeliness matters when it comes to content, as does driving discussions and (hopefully) friendly debate. Focus on finding a balance between informing your audience and picking their brains.
TikTok
Don’t dismiss TikTok as a free-for-all where you have to talk like a teenager to gain traction. Fact: TikTok notes that education drives most content discovery on the platform.
Translation? Users are curious and hungry to learn something new “Hack” videos and “Did-you-know?” content dominate the platform for a reason. No matter what you post, your content should say “Hey, check this out.”
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