Social Media Writing Guide for 2025
Writing social posts for your personal account is pretty simple, but things can get complex when you’re writing on behalf of a brand, company, or influencer persona. To be successful with social media writing, you’ll have to leverage your creativity, research, and formatting skills.
This guide breaks down some of the key best practices and strategies you need to know as a social media writer. Before you start drafting your next post, explore these key elements to make sure you’re on the right track.
Types of Social Media Writing
First, it’s important to understand one key question: What is social media copy? Social media copy includes any kind of writing for social media. There are many different kinds of social content, from short quips to long, well-researched guides and scripts. The type of content you’re creating will have a major impact on your writing approach.
Text Posts
Basic text posts on platforms like X (formerly known as Twitter) and Bluesky can be a great way for brands to engage their followers and develop a relatable brand identity. As a writer, creating successful text posts starts with understanding the brand’s voice. These posts should have a simple concept, whether you want to make a statement or make someone laugh.
Photo Captions
Many social media platforms, such as Instagram and Pinterest, focus on photos and videos as opposed to text posts. However, brands still need writers to craft captions that complement photos and inspire followers to interact. Successful captions will reference and build upon the photo content without getting too wordy or complex.
Link Posts
While other kinds of text posts might focus on starting a conversation and getting engagement within a platform, link posts are designed to redirect readers to another website. Captions for links should have a strong call to action that quickly catches a reader’s attention and convinces them to check out your blog post or sign up for a consultation.
Thought Leadership Pieces
While social media content is often comedic or entertaining, it can also be educational. Many companies leverage thought leadership on social media and use their social pages as a hub for serious discussion with more structured ideas. Thought leadership particularly thrives on sites like LinkedIn, where B2B businesses want to get social engagement in a serious, professional setting.
Following Style Guides for On-Brand Content
Before you start brainstorming post ideas, make sure you have a solid framework for your writing. Just like companies have style guides for their blogs and website copy, they also have brand guides for social media.
Following style specifications is especially important on social media, where brands often want to personify themselves and be more relatable to their followers. Carefully review any available brand guidelines to ensure that you’re portraying the right voice and using preferred language.
If a client doesn’t have a social media writing style guide available, study their existing posts to get a sense of the personality you want to convey. Looking at a few social media writing examples from their page can give you an idea of what kind of writing works with their audience. You can also look for a social media writing guide template online, which is a customizable document you can use to keep track of brand preferences.
Keeping Up With Hashtags and Trends
You can identify trending content by exploring hashtags, looking at common searches for various platforms, or simply scrolling through your feed to see what brands and average people are posting. If you want to reference or participate in a trend, do some research to make sure you’re approaching it from the right angle.
Depending on the platform, you’ll also want to use thoughtful hashtags to boost the visibility of your writing. Make sure the hashtags are active and popular, so you aren’t just stuffing your captions with too many or random keywords.
Generating Unique Ideas
The brainstorming phase of a social post can be just as important as the actual writing element. Because social media is often driven by trends, it can be easy to get lost in the crowd. It’s important to strike a balance between following trends and putting your own unique spin on your content. You can get inspiration from other posts, but think about how you can add to the conversation with your writing instead of being repetitive.
Structuring Your Posts
Post structure is one of the most important concepts to master as a social media writer. Each platform has its own character limits, formats, and best practices. For example, X and Bluesky have short character allowances, so you’ll have to focus on being concise. On LinkedIn and Facebook, however, you have more room to create longer posts with a blog-like structure.
Implementing Engagement Strategies
Getting engagement through social media writing is unique from other kinds of copy. That’s because there are so many ways people can interact with your posts. They can comment, share, click a link, repost a story, and more. It’s important to know what kind of engagement you’re seeking so you can curate your calls to action accordingly.
Do you want to pose a question to your audience, encouraging them to comment? Do you want to direct them to repost? Adjust your writing depending on the type of CTA that will lead to your desired engagement.
Finding Visuals For Your Copy
As a writer, text is likely your focus. On social media, however, having the right visuals can elevate your copy, help you tell a story, and improve your engagement.
In many cases, you might be writing captions to complement a photo or video; in other situations, your writing is the star, and you’ll need to find a photo to match the vibe. You can use memes, product photos, or user-generated content to complement your writing.
If you aren’t working with a brand’s graphic designer, there are plenty of stock photo sites like Shutterstock that offer free images licensed for commercial use. When resharing or reposting visuals from another source, make sure you have permission and give credit with a tag or shoutout.
Boosting the Visibility of Your Posts
Social media writing requires both quality and quantity. Having a frequent posting schedule can enhance the visibility of your content, as many social platforms will push content from accounts that post frequently. Collaborate with your clients to find a promotional schedule that fits their brand goals and keeps their page relevant.
Common Social Media Writing Mistakes to Avoid
Finding your groove with social media writing can involve some trial and error, as you see what kind of copy gets the most attention and positive feedback. However, you can avoid some of the biggest social media writing mistakes by learning from other brands. Here are some of the main pitfalls to avoid:
- Using long blocks of text: Even if you’re writing thought leadership content, you still want it to be scannable on a phone. Break up your paragraphs into bite-sized pieces to make them more readable.
- Forgetting a CTA: Remember to include a call to action to boost the shareability of your writing and encourage engagement from followers.
- Being too salesy: Even if you’re promoting a brand or selling a product on social media, try not to be too heavy-handed with your advertising copy.
- Copying other creators: Make sure you’re writing original content, even when you’re participating in trends. You want your writing to cultivate a distinct, original vibe for your brand instead of simply parroting popular content.
Put Our Social Media Writing Best Practices to Use
Because social media is so diverse, it can be intimidating to get started as a social media writer. By getting familiar with best practices for social media writing, you can successfully capture your client’s online voice and use your writing to drive engagement with their followers. Paying attention to phrasing, creating a readable post structure, and thoughtfully referencing trends in your writing can get you well on your way to success.
Ready to put your social media writing knowledge to good use? Check out the ContentWriters blog to learn even more about writing high-performing content.
An earlier version of this post was published in November, 2015 by Anne M.
Wilhemina has years of experience writing in the tech and business space.
