How do you adjust your style for social media?

It all depends on your target audience. The more authentic you are with your content, the more eyeballs you get. More than strategy, it all comes down to how you are creating a community with your journey.

I tailor my social media content to fit each platform's unique vibe. On Twitter, I'm brief, witty, and conversational. Instagram is all about high-quality visuals with friendly captions. LinkedIn demands a professional, data-driven tone, while Facebook is where I keep it casual and community-oriented. My ultimate goal is to connect with audiences by adapting my style, tone, and messaging to suit each platform's character and engage with them effectively.

Maintaining an authentic voice is non-negotiable, but tailoring your media format and style to each platform is key. On LinkedIn, long-form content can showcase your expertise, while Twitter's brevity calls for quick, impactful statements. Facebook benefits from a blend of informative and engaging posts, and Instagram is your stage for compelling visuals. Your voice stays consistent, but the way you deliver your message shifts to align with each platform's unique audience and norms. This balanced approach maximizes both authenticity and engagement.

Adapting your tone and content to match the platform. For example, using concise and engaging language on Twitter, visual content on Instagram, and more in-depth articles on LinkedIn. Overly formal or robotic language. People want to connect with real personalities on social media, so being too scripted can backfire.

Adjusting your style for social media is essential to effectively connect with your target audience and meet your marketing goals. Each social media platform has its unique characteristics and user expectations. Here's how you can adjust your style for social media: 1.Understand Your Audience 2.Platform-Specific Content 3.Visual Branding 4.Competitor Analysis Adapting your style for each social media platform requires a mix of research, creativity, and ongoing optimization.

Our tone of voice should reflect our real life tone of voice. I’m not talking about our pitch ??, but how we converse in real life. If we’re chatty and casual when we converse in real life, do the same across our social channels. Sure, different platforms are used in slightly different ways but is it not easier to chose our tone by who we are and who we are trying to engage rather than what platform we’re on?

For me, your tone really needs to be authentic and sound like you! At the moment, LinkedIn is awash with CHAT GPT penned comments and articles and quite frankly, you can tell. They lack style, and they lack personality and iambic pentameter ( which I particularly love)! They are so formulaic, and anyone who enjoys reading and prose can tell very quickly that an AI tool has written them! Be original and actually perfect your own tone of voice, and define and refine your own narrative too. You will probably get more traction and better results.

Write (or post) as you speak. You'll be told over and over again, by gurus and experts, etc., that you need to post and share in a certain way to be successful. Don't listen. It's our own unique style of writing and speaking that makes our social shares genuine. I live to alliterate. And when I can't do that, I often rhyme. In speech and in writing. There's a careful balance between real and valuable. In order for what you share to be valuable, it also needs to be genuine and real. There's no one-size-fits-all way to write or share your thoughts. Find what works, for you, and stick with it.

Authentic and appropriate tone makes all the difference in how effectively your audience resonates with your message and trusts your brand. In addition to aligning your comms with your overarching brand TOV, think about the following: Reverse engineer content - starting with reactions. Visualise the sentiment you want, and then craft content to evoke it. Storytelling over selling - engage with narratives. Make your followers the protagonist, not just consumers. Emotional intelligence - Read the virtual room. Adjust tone based on current events, trending topics, and cultural sentiments.

Optimizing social media content doesn't start and stop with platform best practices. Really it comes from A/B testing different types of content, and listening to what the data tells you. Here's a really easy way to do this: Publish a given format a reasonable number of times. Say a minimum of 10 times. Compare your average or median performance for whatever KPI matters to you against your other formats that you've published 10 times. Double down on the formats that over-performed. Cut the ones that didn't. Invent new formats, test again, repeat cutting.

In addition for iterative A/B testing for content style and format optimisation, some points to consider: 1. Optimise for shares and saves over likes. Platforms are tweaking algorithms to favour genuine engagement. 2. Consider when your audience consumes content, not just when they're online. 3. Cross-Pollination - leverage insights from one platform to inform strategy on another. Instagram insights might reveal TikTok opportunities.

To maximize your social media impact, it's essential to tailor your content to both the platform and its underlying algorithms. Do's: Prioritize Engagement: High engagement rates often translate to better algorithmic visibility. Quality Over Quantity: Invest in fewer, high-quality posts, especially crucial on Instagram and LinkedIn. Smart Tagging: Utilize hashtags on Twitter and Instagram. Don'ts: Clickbait: Clickbait and irrelevant tags can result in penalties. Over-Promotion: Excessive sales content is frowned upon, esp. Facebook. Inconsistency: Irregular posting can negatively impact your visibility. Adapting to each platform's algorithmic nuances while maintaining your voice can significantly boost both your reach and engagement.

Sure, you want your shares to show up. That means you have to pay attention to the algorithms and trends. But it's VERY obvious when that's all you're doing. Writing to and for the algorithms rather than writing to and for your audience. Make sure your own unique voice is the showcase, not a specific sentence length. You can create a carousel or a short video to meet algorithmic needs, but if it's just noise you've not optimized at all. Value matters more than following a trend or catering to an algorithm.

It's good to repurpose content across different formats. For example, one trend that I see is creators sharing tweet screenshots at carousels here on Linkedin and on IG too. Those tend to get some traction and work well!

Some often overlooked reasons to diversify content formats: 1. Neurodiversity respect. Different formats resonate with different cognitive styles. By diversifying, you cater to a broader audience. 2. Platform lifecycles. Platforms evolve. What's trendy now might fade. Diverse formats prepare you for these shifts. 3. Creative longevity. Diverse formats keep your content fresh and prevent creative fatigue. It’s a sustainability play.

As far as frequency goes, I would say the best thing to do is test what works for you and your brand. Not saying to do a new post every minute, but try doing a couple a day and one a day to see which cadence performs better and is more realistic for you to keep consistent with.

In addition to understanding the platform culture, I think consistency is more important than total posting cadence in many cases. Determining a sustainable posting frequency based on your current situation—and sticking to it for a solid amount of time—can be a great way to set expectations with your audience (and algorithms).

In addition to the obvious: Digital Minimalism: Instead of posting everything, lean towards 'less is more'. Prioritise quality over quantity, offering deeper value in fewer posts. Cultural Contextually: Adjust to the local digital language. Social media transcends geographical boundaries, but memes, trends, and references are often region-specific. Genuine Authenticity: Resist the urge to curate perfection. Followers resonate more with genuine experiences, mistakes, and learning curves. Visual Linguistics: Embrace the shift from textual to visual storytelling. It's not about the words but the mood, aesthetics, and feelings they evoke. Finally, post with purpose, respecting the attention bandwidth of your audience.

Thank you for sharing these valuable insights on adapting our social media style! As the digital landscape evolves, understanding our audience and catering to their expectations remains at the core of successful social media engagement. Shweta Kukreja and Nikhil Wad highlight the importance of authenticity and community-building, and I couldn't agree more. Your real-life tone of voice is the foundation upon which an effective online presence is built, as Janine Capaldi wisely points out. In the age of automation, Lou Nylander's emphasis on originality and personality is a refreshing reminder.