Social Content Optimization: The Rise of Social Copywriting

At the turn of the century, savvy marketers realized they needed to optimize their websites for search engines in order to be found online. This led to the birth of an entire industry that sprung up to help companies with search engine optimization (SEO). SEO became an art and science, always trying to keep up with Google to "game the system" for search visibility. Traditional copywriters had to be re-trained to write for SEO. Analysts focused on keyword research, keyword density on a page, tags and meta data, etc.

While SEO is still important today, writing for social has become increasingly important for social networks and good ole fashion websites. You need to think about the best # hash tag to use or the type of content to convey your marketing message (Does this call for a video or photo?).

Using social listening tools can help marketers see what is trending and to inspire content developers and copywriters. Who can forget @Oreo's awesome and timely tweet during Super Bowl 47's blackout?

Such #winning moments don't happen very often like that. So it's important to note that it's not about hitting a home run every time at bat. Instead, it's about being smart in order to get a single or double each time you post.

Using tools like Quintly, you can see engagement of your or other user's content by type and time of day or day of week (see example charts below). Then you might learn that Mondays at 3pm is the best time for posting that cat video! =) Right time, right content.

User Posts By Day of Week - Quintly

Post Reactions Table - Quintly

At a Quintly Meetup event a few months ago, a team from IAC talked about how they are taking an analytic-driven approach for publishing content on their recently launched Throwback.to site and Facebook page. They were using Quintly reports on a weekly basis to empower social media community managers to measure user reaction and engagement on content in order to make decisions on what to post next. The site is quite an interesting experiment.

So, as you think about what to post online, keep in mind social content optimization. And be sure your content is not only searchable, but likeable and shareable.

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