Good morning! Do you have one minute to read and one hour to do? If so, you can improve your small business’ marketing in a big way. Each week, we will provide new ideas. Grab your morning beverage and let’s get started.
This Week: Try This Copywriting Technique in Your Next Social Media Post
Copywriting is simply a type of writing you use to get an audience to act in a certain way. Does that also sound like the foundation of social media to you? More specifically, as social posters, we may be trying to get them to visit our website, accept our offer, or follow us.
Today we are looking at another proven copywriting formula that we can adapt for our social media posting. (In the May 8th Morning Mark: https://www.smallbizbrands.com/marketing-to-consumer-pain-points/, we highlighted another copywriting method.) The technique is called Bridge After Bridge.
As the name implies, the method lets you take the reader from their current state to an optimal state by metaphorically building bridges.
STEP ONE
Think of your consumer.
Think of what you know and what your research tells you about your customers’ aspirations. What is their desired reality? This is the beginning of the first bridge. Describe it concisely and so the potential consumer has no doubt that we are describing their “nirvana”.
STEP TWO
Describe how your business would get them to their ideal goal.
Build them a bridge with your solution. What does your business have to offer to get them to their goal? Is it a technology, a product, a service? Relate it so simply that even a kindergartner could understand it. Use examples of customers you have helped in a similar fashion.
STEP THREE
Describe their new reality in more detail.
Describe the benefits of their new world. How does life differ from when they were standing at the start of the first bridge? Make it come alive.
Do they have more time? Are they making more money? Are they healthier, etc?
STEP FOUR
Make sure your copywriting is not wordy or overcomplicated.
Take one more look at your post description. If it is still too long, you may need to break this into more than one post by focusing on one benefit per post. You can’t go wrong here. Discovering you have two or three posts instead of one is usually good news.
Takeaway: When you occasionally speak like this to your social media audience, they can see that you understand them in a way that your competitors do not. Their comfort level with your business will increase instantly. With further attention and relationship building, you will find them acting in the way you had hoped. This was the goal of copywriting that we started out trying to achieve and why we are willing to devote our time to social media posting.
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