Welcome to lesson three, the formula. Think about back when you were in high school or in college and you had to write very specific essays for a very specific audience, there was kind of a formula to it. Well, there's a formula for social media posting, too. And that consists of four parts. There's the grab the writing to your reader, the image, and the action step. Before we practice the formula, we're going to take a look at some examples of social media posts.

That worked really well. Now, I want you to take a look at this following post. This was posted to Facebook by Walmart. Why does this work so well? this post had over 53,000 likes. Well, let's take a look.

When thinking about the first part of the formula, we talked about the grab. The grab could be text or picture related. In this case, the picture is really a big standout. The text is engaging is Because it's talking about some sales that are happening at the store, and then there's a simple action step. They're asking their audience to engage with the post by either clicking like for the tacos or share for the ice cream bar. This is something that your audience will quickly and easily engage with.

Because it doesn't take a lot of time. It's important to remember that your action steps shouldn't be too complicated. These next two posts are made by Lotus candles and GoPro and they were posted to Twitter and Instagram, you can see that the Lotus candles post had over 740,000 views. The Instagram post use a very engaging image. There are some differences when posting to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, which we'll talk about at a later session. But I want you to just take notice of the different techniques that these three companies used for successful posting.

At this point, you may want to pause your video because we're going to get into a practical tip. But you might want to take a little time to look back at those images. Keeping track of what you post and when you post can help you decide which types of posts are getting the most engagement, I would suggest keeping some sort of Google document or sheet available where you can literally put down the post that you made the time of day, what you wrote what visual visual image you used, and what your action step was. Go back and take a look at the engagement and reflect upon those things so that you can get the most out of your posting. Also, if you sit down and write it out before you post it, it'll help you check for spelling and grammar before it goes live. The last thing that you want to do is have something with mistakes in it that can be embarrassing.

Okay, so formula step one, the graph I have on the left some quick tips that will help you When you think about what you're going to type into your social media posts. First keep it clear and concise and simple. Don't go over about 18 words and use one to two relevant emojis to help grab attention. The texts that you use can either ask a question, make a bold statement, share a product or a cause, update, or anything else that you think will help engage your audience. If you're including any type of information that you want your audience to engage with, whether it's a link to a website or an article, make sure that it's well Event make sure that it's not taking them to a website that they wouldn't want to visit on their own. And make sure that it also enhances what you're posting, it should offer a little bit more information than your post.

Please don't use click baits, your audience will quickly disengage with you if you drag them to a site that they have no interest in going to. The visual is a really important part of social media posting, the visual is what is going to really stand out amongst a sea of different posts that your audience will be scrolling through. So quick tips, you could use a picture or a video similar to the latest candles post, make sure that your picture is consistent and that is going to elicit some sort of emotional response. It needs to serve a purpose. Okay, Is it funny? Is that informative?

Does it reflect your audience? Will it help validate them and make sure that it's not off putting or offensive in any way the audience that you have built is not going to continue to engage with your posts if they feel offended or if they feel like something is appropriate, you might consider using a picture or a video of a product or something that you're trying to raise awareness about. Again, keeping in mind that whatever you post should be consistent with the message that you're trying to send for that specific post with your target audience in mind. After creating your visual imagery for the posts, you're going to want to start to think about the next step, step four, which is the action step, the action step is really how you're going to be engaging your audience. And it's a very important part of this process, because the algorithms that the different social media sites use, kind of rely on how much engagement each post has.

Therefore, the more engagement the more likely that will continue to be seen. Some quick tips for step four are to create your action pieces. As easy, quick, clear and rewarding, it needs to be clear what you expect your audience to do. And it needs to be rewarding to them in some way. Maybe it confirms their self perception, maybe it offers some sort of incentive, but it needs to be quick, easy, clear and rewarding. So we're going to take a look at a couple of different posts that I actually created to support my children's books that I publish.

So the first post is something I put on Twitter, and it says, Who says thank you cards are a dying art. And it's got an emoji, I believe it's got a catchy headline, some cute graphics and just the right amount of taglines for Twitter. But there's definitely something that's missing. So based on what we've talked about with the four elements of the formula, what would be that missing piece? Well, if you said the missing component was the action step. You're absolutely correct.

So in this case, Next slide, you'll notice that I'm promoting the same book, the same idea of using the the ideas of thank you cards. But I changed the post a little bit in order to also contain that action step to really get that engagement with the audience. So the three elements again, were there in the previous one, but the action piece was missing. So in this post that I had on Twitter, it's the same product, but the call to action is a little link that someone could actually shop and purchase the book. I did use a shortened link with a program called Bitly. All you have to do is log into Bitly.

Type in your extended link and it will shorten it for you. It also has options for tracking so if you wanted to keep track of how many clicks you're getting on that link, you could use that as a tool as well. But again, it's the same product a little bit tweaked. I also had an emoji. I also tagged the alias Straight I have this book just as another way to keep the promotions going and hopefully get some extra shares. But most importantly, I put that action link and it was just short, quick and easy shop today.

Okay, so it's time for you to take a turn and try out all that we've discussed discussed so far. So you're going to create a social media post, keeping in mind your reader using your voice and the formula that we talked about. Again, that formula is the grab the information, the visual and the action. So follow the formula and post your project to the class board. You're also welcome to of course, just post it to social media in general and see what kind of response you get. Don't forget to look at your posted follow the formula.

Please check your spelling and grammar. Use that tracking document if you want and go ahead and get something posted. Good luck.