How To Effectively Write Copy For Different Social Media Platforms
Posted on 13th March 2025
Copywriting plays a key role in your marketing campaigns – sitting alongside your visual elements in both ads and general posts as a way for you to get more information across, speak directly to your audience and generate interest and sales.
Each platform requires different styles and lengths of copy that can be effective for your business when marketing on social media. Here’s how you can write copy for Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X.
Instagram is a visual platform, and your main efforts here should lie with your images and videos. Here, your copy can be used to give context to your visual elements, but it shouldn’t be too long. Instagram recommends using 3-5 hashtags, and using your call to action early on in your caption is more effective than leaving it to the end of your post. If you do have more to say, using infographics is a good way to keep followers hooked – as they’ll likely see on their feed before they see your copy.
Facebook is still the third most visited website behind Google and YouTube, and has over 3 billion active users. Sprout Social research found that 60% of people use Facebook for product discovery – meaning it’s incredibly important you get your copy right if you’re using Facebook for your marketing efforts. Facebook has a character limit of just over 63,000, so there’s a lot of room for you to get your message across. Despite this, people aren’t coming onto Facebook to read long blogs or sales pitches – you have to grab their attention quickly – keeping in mind the KISS model (Keep It Short and Simple) when it comes to writing your copy. In fact, Buffer’s research recommends that using 80 or less characters give’s posts a 66% higher engagement rate. Anytime you post a link or a picture, use a short, persuasive and catchy piece of copy alongside it.
X
X (or Twitter) is a little more complicated – whilst premium accounts have 10,000 characters to work with, non-premium accounts have 280 characters to work with – which isn’t a lot of room if you have a lot to say. With around 240 characters being the recommended amount, you should make sure your points are concise enough to fit, but also detailed enough to get your point across. Tweets with hashtags get 2x more engagement, but using more than 3 hashtags a post can see a drop in engagement. You can also create your own hashtag relevant to your business which helps people find your products and services.
When creating copy on LinkedIn, you need to approach it a little differently to how you approach your other social media platforms. On Facebook, Instagram and X, you’re talking to consumers – on LinkedIn, you’re talking to other businesses, so you’ll have to change up your language and marketing plans too. Whilst you can use LinkedIn to push simple posts or job offers onto your connections’ timelines, it’s also a great place to repurpose your blogs and get them out in front of other industry leaders – showing your expertise and building trust in you and your business. You can upload these as articles – picking a catchy title, writing or pasting in your content and using an attention-grabbing picture.
Copywriting forms a big part of your social media marketing efforts, and understanding the different methods and styles to use on different platforms can help you form your plans for each site more effectively. By tailoring your approach, you and your team will have a clearer idea of how to approach your social media sites, and improve your engagement.