10 Ideas For Writing Engaging Social Media Content Previews

Micheli , Invited guest @ Mailrelay

One of the best ways to help your blog or website content get more exposure is by promoting this content on your social media accounts. But how can you do this effectively? That’s when content previews can be especially useful.

Content previews allow you to hook potential readers, viewers, or listeners before they even get to see your content. Hence, here are the ten best ideas for writing engaging social media content previews.

#1 Know Your Audience

It goes without saying that you need to know your audience well if you want to create previews that your audience will actually engage with. If you don’t know who your readers, viewers, or listeners are, you can’t create the kind of content that will catch their attention and make them want to continue coming back to your social media accounts.

When doing your research about your audience, start with basic things like demographics and personal information. Then, move on to more specific details such as their content format preferences, likes and dislikes, hobbies and interests, etc. Knowing all of these characteristics about your target audience will help you segment it and create profiles for each group.

Once you have created profiles for each segment of your audience, you will be able to create previews that will target specific types of people in your audience. You will be able to address specific pain points and interests, create more effective CTAs, and so on.

#2 Develop A Distinctive Voice

Speaking of the way you address your target audience or its segments, you should also develop a distinctive brand voice that you will use throughout all of your content previews and your content marketing in general. Here are some general tips to follow that will help you develop your voice:

  • Write in a friendly tone, especially if you want to sound casual and like you would be actually talking to a friend.
  • Don’t dance around what you want to say – just say it as it is directly. You know your audience, so why not address them the way they would like it?
  • Speak the same languages as your audience. In other words, use the tone and jargon they would use, but avoid overusing terminology that could overload your content.
  • Focus on positive things and avoid using negative language. You can be subtle with such positivity, but you definitely have to add at least some of it to your voice.

#3 Give A Reason To Click

Because you are working on a content preview post, your main goal is to make your audience click on the link and check out the content itself. This is exactly why you should always give a reason to click, whatever that reason may be. Here are some techniques you can use:

  • Point out that your content is already popular. This shows that your content has been acknowledged by other people already which is similar to using social proof to sell a product.
  • Mention an exclusive piece of content or a bonus. If your article has some kind of bonus that your audience will be interested in, it’s worth pointing this out in the preview you publish to persuade more people to click.
  • Find a mind-blowing fact to include. Of course, not every piece of content will have something like this, but if this is the case, you should definitely mention the fact in your content preview.

#4 Make Citations And Tag Sources

An interesting way to make people engage with your content preview is by giving your audience a sneak-peak beforehand. One way to do this is by making citations from the content itself. In other words, by quoting your own content, you can persuade your audience to check out the content itself.

On the other hand, you might want to cite and tag other reliable sources that are relevant to your case. For example, if you have an article about a particular brand, you can tag that brand in the content preview. If you are publishing an interview with someone, you can tag your interviewee in the preview.

In most cases, it’s better to tag and cite well-known sources, experts, brands, etc. However, you can still have citations and tags even if your source is not particularly well-known. It will still help you engage your audience and even interact with the person or brand you tag.

#5 Show The Table Of Contents

While quotes or citations can be a great way to give your audience a sneak-peak into your content, another way to do this is by showing the table of contents. This way, you are showing your audience what they can expect to see once they click the link and check out your content.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to mention everything you will be talking about – just some of the most important parts can be enough. For example, if you have a video about how to find research paper help, you can mention in your content preview that you will talk about how to find writing services, how to avoid scammers, and which services are reliable.

#6 Add Visual Content

A good content preview has to be short and precise with no unnecessary information. However, it should also be eye-catching. You can’t have just text in your content preview which is exactly why you need to add visual content to your preview. Here are some tips to follow in this regard:

  • Use humorous but relevant imagery if you have content that is meant to entertain.
  • Experiment with different types of visuals, including illustrations, photographs, GIFs, videos, animations, infographics, and more.
  • Avoid using clickbait in your titles and visuals, but don’t be afraid to edit some images or video thumbnails to be more intriguing.

#7 Utilize CTAs Effectively

Unarguably, CTAs play a big role in the success of your content previews and your content marketing as a whole. However, utilizing them effectively might take more effort than you expect. Placing CTAs within your previews is crucial for increasing engagement, but you should also make sure that your CTAs are worded correctly. Here are some things to keep in mind when writing your CTAs:

  • Be direct, but don’t demand more than your audience can actually do. Taking it one step at a time is ideal.
  • Prioritize CTAs that will persuade your audience to click and check out your content (e.g. “Follow the link to read more.”)
  • Occasionally, ask them to complete more complicated actions related to your content (e.g. subscribing to your channel or newsletter, following you on social media, sharing your content).
  • Ask them a question instead of adding a direct CTA. The question should be related to your content so that they check out your content and then leave a comment with their opinion on it.

#8 Curate User-Generated Content

You don’t always have to create content yourself which is why not all of your previews will need to be about your own content. In other words, you can curate UGC and then create previews for that content. On the other hand, you might want to republish UGC video content on your blog or website and then create content preview for that. In any case, here are some ways you can make your content curation more interesting:

  • Check relevant hashtags both within your industry and outside of it. The content you find and share with your audience doesn’t necessarily have to be about your brand – it just has to be relevant to what you usually share and what your audience will be interested in.
  • Interact with people who directly tag your brand or mention it. This is especially important for getting social proof. Any positive reviews you find can be then shared on your official brand accounts as well. You can use social media reporting tools to filter out these conversations in real time.
  • Look inside your company and see what your employees are posting. Their content can also be curated and republished on your brand’s official social media accounts as long as it is useful to your audience.

#9 Publish At The Right Time

Just like you would publish a particular piece of content at a specific time of day and week, you need to publish your previews with such considerations in mind as well. Here are some tips that could be helpful in planning your posting schedule:

  • Balance content about the latest trends and news with evergreen content. If there is something urgent you need to talk about, then don’t hesitate to publish it and put out a preview for it.
  • Schedule your evergreen content at the time when your audience is the most active online. Run some tests and see when your audience responds the best to your previews and then schedule them for those times of the day and week.
  • Be consistent with your posting frequency. If you want to excel with your social media marketing long-term, then you need to create long-term goals for your activities and be consistent with what you do.

#10 Evaluate Results And Improve

Last but not least, don’t be afraid to change up some things about your content preview strategy if you think that some things aren’t working. To understand which tactics have been successful and which ones weren’t as effective as you expected them to be, always make sure to track the performance of your previews and your content.

If you consistently track performance and have metrics to measure success, then you can accurately evaluate results and make smarter decisions going forward. In other words, it’s all about finding what works for your brand specifically and how you can make that work even better in the future. Always keep this in mind when planning your further social media marketing activities.

Conclusion

All in all, there are many things you can do to create more engaging previews for your social media accounts. As long as you follow the tips in this article, you will be able to create previews that your audience will want to interact with. In turn, this will increase the performance of your content as a whole.

What do you think? What are your favorite techniques for writing engaging social media content previews? Leave a comment!

Author’s Bio: Max Mitchell is the latest alumnus of our content marketing department. He is very passionate about typing, creating complicated spreadsheets, and consuming an inhuman amount of caffeine. Nevertheless, he is also the creative type of individual who will always find a new perspective on topics of interest.

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