Forget clickbait and instead focus your energy on crafting quality Social content with clear value and relevance. You want posts that will spark interest and compel your audience to click through to your website or blog.

Here are Igniyte’s 8 tips for making your social content more clickable.

1 Provide clear value to the right readers

Your audience is made up from real people who have real needs and goals. Before you can engage them meaningfully you need to understand who they are so you can tailor your content to help them. Whether that’s sharing information, advice, opinion, sparking a conversation, helping them solve their problems, meeting a need or even just making their day better.

You can’t will them to click through to read more if you haven’t done your research and been explicit about the benefit of clicking through.

So, tip number 1 is make sure your Social Media post answers the question “What’s in it for me?” from the reader’s perspective. Provide a tangible benefit tailored to your most valuable potential audience.

2 Make it personal

A simple way to connect is to get personal. Write in the second person using words such as “you” and “your.” It’s accessible and gets potential readers invested in your message from the start. Always ask yourself if you’d click on what you’ve written.

3 Build curiosity

Curiosity can breathe real life into your social Media posts. Asking a question is one easy way to spark curiosity and get your readers thinking about how much they have to learn. But make sure you answer the question to avoid the clickbait flag. You could also cite a surprising fact, stat, quote, myth, report or challenge an expectation. Plus, think multimedia – images, videos, infographics and GIFs.

4 Be straightforward and active

Reading takes time and attention and research shows that most people scan read when they are online. It’s the same for social network feeds until something catches their eye.

So, our advice here is to use clear, simple language to catch people’s attention long enough for them to click through your social content. Always use active (rather than passive) sentences to keep your sentence structure simple and easy to understand.

5 Think before you post

Social media can be hugely beneficial, but it can also put your reputation at risk. A single ill-judged post or message can bring your whole reputation into disrepute. If you employ someone to post on your behalf or employees are posting, set clear guidelines, circulate and monitor them.

6 End on action Include a call to action

If you want people to click through to your content, it’s a good idea to ask them to click through to it, so end your post with a call to action, such as “Find out more” “Tell us what you think” “Join the conversation” or Get in Touch”, etc.

7 Make your social content easy to share

Use social sharing buttons to make it easy for others to share content from your website or blog on their own social media channels to bump up your referral traffic. We like this article all about how to make your content easy to share from snaptactix, which has some great suggestions.

8 Optimize, optimize, optimize!

Finally, while the tips above apply to all social networks, which you can use for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest, for example, it’s also a good idea to explore specifics to optimise for each. For example, use compelling GIFs, images or videos with every Tweet to maximise engagement and clicks.

Do you have any more clickable content tips to share? Or want to find out how to make the most of your business or professional social media content? Get in touch, email [email protected]

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