Confessions from my Commute
Social Media Activity:
how to write a great social media post
I’m sorry.
If you googled “how to go viral” and landed up here, I can’t help you. I can however give you a formula that will help maximize your chances of generating quality engagement on your social media posts.
The anatomy of a great post is:
STEP 1: Add something of value with everything you share
+
STEP 2: Include a click-through direction, e.g. "Register now", "Click here to learn more"
+
STEP 3: Attach an eye-catching visual from a site like https://www.pexels.com/ or https://unsplash.com/ (free from copyright) to disrupt feeds and stop people from scrolling past your content
=
Quality post.
EXAMPLE
I put this exact formula to work on my own social media content, and regularly enjoy reach and engagement that spreads far beyond my own network of followers.
As an example, in the first week of January this year, I came across a listicle entitled “21 ways to supercharge productivity in 2021”. I thought
Great! I need this.
But the article was full of rubbish.
At this point, I had a choice. I could ‘flame’ the author for wasting my time, I could carry on my way silently, or I could implement the formula above.
So instead, I commented on the article:
Interesting take. I was surprised not to see my favourite productivity app listed so I’ll share it here. It’s called Evernote, and it enables me to track my notes regardless of the platform I’m on. For those interested, here is a link to download it free from the app store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/evernote-notes-organizer/id281796108And I kid you not, by simply adding value, telling people where to click and having the rich media snippet populate in my comment to break up the otherwise dense wall of text, I generated more engagement on my comment than the article itself had on it.
The best part? I didn’t need a PhD or hours of research to make an impactful post. I simply drew authentically from my own experiences and followed a formula.
And you can too.