Hemingway once said that all you need to do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed – but copywriters nowadays won’t agree. To create an amazing copy that rocks, there are so many details and factors that you need to remember and take into account.
Good news is here, however! In this article, we’ve listened down five of the most common social media copywriting mistakes often made. You can even use it as a checklist whenever you need to write a copy or review a draft!
1. Not Knowing The Audience
One of the most delicate mistakes you can make when writing social media copy is needing to understand who your audience is. Crafting your content to make sense to you and your audience is possible. It’s great to know and understand what your product or service can do, but there is a huge difference between how your audience would like to hear about your product and how you want it presented.
One way you can combat this is by ensuring you know your audience. Get acquainted with your audience by creating a buyer’s persona so that you can understand your audience’s needs, pains, and motivations better, like how you know your friend. This will greatly help you pinpoint their goals, align your copy to their interests, and make content that works.
An agency like Carl Ocab Digital Marketing (their site is https://www.carlocab.com/) is familiar with writing targeted content for their audience.
2. Using Passive Voice
Good copywriting can directly influence people to take action. Good copy is straightforward, does not beat around the bush, is clear, and does not confuse writing. However, you undermine that when you write using the passive voice.
The verb acts on the subject when you use passive voice, making the phrase sound odd. In addition, it stilts your copy and makes it harder to understand for your audience. As a result, you should be vigilant about your copy. You can look for ways to identify if your copy starts going into passive voice – look into “to be” variants such as “are, were, been, etc.” as they lack confidence.
By fixing the passive voice, you can ensure your copy is clear and engaging!
3. Wrong Tone
There’s a golden rule in copywriting. It follows the brand’s tone of voice when you craft your copy. You must stay consistent to reach your target audience.
The tone concerns the brand’s values, philosophies, attitude, and relationship with its audience. It will also help you speak the same language as them.
4. Jargon Use
You inevitably absorb more and more industry jargon the longer you stay in a company or industry. There will be acronyms and abbreviations that are common to you. However, if you use them in copy, especially if you do it excessively, they can alienate your audience.
This mistake is challenging because you must sound knowledgeable and authoritative and use your audience’s language. However, it would help if you also were relatable, so doing this can be tricky.
Using up to one technical jargon for every ten words of copy is possible. That way, you can strike a friendly and delicate balance between being relatable and hitting the mark in your audience’s vocabulary.
5. Ignoring The Funnel
There is a marketing and sales funnel – a process that aids in guiding potential customers through a series of stages where prospects become conversions. By overlooking the sales funnel stage, you might fumble the copy. To get it right, you need to know at what stage of the funnel your customer is – if they know about the product, if they are ready to buy, or if they have any fears.
These stages are crucial because they inform you about how they feel right now, and you can choose the right techniques to convince them that your product is worth purchasing.
Wrapping Up
We now have enumerated the most common mistakes you’ve made in copywriting. Remember always to check this list we’ve got. Get your copywriting formulas, and check everything before having it checked!