How many times do you open a social media app, stare at a blank screen, close it again 10 seconds later? Yeah. Me too.

Look, I’m not going to sugar coat it, writing captions and copy can be #hardwork! Especially within the online space, where you start to feel compelled to show up every damn day with something of value.

Just because I do this activity on the daily doesn’t mean I don’t get writers block too! It’s one of those tricky things, where the harder we try to write the perfect post, the chances of it sounding worse escalates!
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Don’t get me wrong, I believe everyone can and should write! It’s good for your soul and a great way to get a complexity of thoughts and feelings out of your system and down on paper (or your screen!). I also understand that there’s a lot of pressure to be witty, interesting or ‘sell’, and more often than not, the process ends up feeling forced and falls short of being anything you hoped for. Because of this, I wanted to share a few simple tips in a bid to help you embrace copywriting and captions moving forward.

Points to consider:

• Who actually cares about what you have to say? Why does it matter to these people?
• Does your post help anyone other than you/your business? If you aren’t currently adding value to your posts, the time is now!
• Is your message conveyed? Post with purpose! Lose the fluffy filler words.
• Captions don’t always have to be clever or have a sales pitch behind them. Focus on building relationships first and then the rest can follow. It’ll be easier to slide in a cheeky ‘check out our website’ or ‘get 10% off if you mention this’ post once your loyal following or target market trusts what you have to say.
• Captions should sound like YOU but be gritty enough to evoke emotion and inspire action! Inspiration to take action is what leads to the close!
• Business and personality DO mix! Don’t be scared to let your character shine through! That’s one of the keys to killer creative copy…just write as YOU! You know what they say about forcing things…there is beauty in simplicity, so embrace it!
• Read it out loud. Use your voice recorder if you need to. Does it sound like you? Is it how you would speak to your friends or family? If not, then tweak it, scratch it, change it!
• Don’t over-do it on the emoji’s! Nobody likes an emoji abuser. They are great for adding tone to your writing but they are there to add to your writing, not replace it.

Sometimes all it takes for the creative juices to start flowing again is to give your brain a little break. But at the end of the day, busy business owners sometimes fail to have the time or passion left to write something for their social media audiences. And that, is the beauty of outsourcing!