How to Write Product Descriptions to Increase Sales on Social Media

Whether you already have a strong social media presence or aim to expand into the market in the near future, optimizing your product descriptions to match those goals is of utmost importance. According to Small Biz Trends, more than 1 in 3 customers refer to social media platforms when searching for their next product purchase with almost 90% of marketers stating that social marketing efforts have increased their exposure and revenue.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn all have something in common when it comes to sales – a multibillion following ready to give your products a shot. With that said, let’s take a look at how to write and optimize product descriptions to increase sales on social media.

Advantages of Social Media Product Description Optimization

By now, everyone knows what social media platforms are and how to use them. However, it’s worth noting why they are important for sales and product description writing in our case. Mathew Sikes, Social Media Manager for Best Essay Education spoke on the matter briefly: “Even though an eCommerce platform may be successful in terms of organic traffic, PPC and/or affiliate marketing, social media advertisement can outperform all of those communication channels if it’s done correctly.” It makes sense to push products via social media marketing due to its widespread use and accessibility. As such, the benefits of social media sales include the following:

• Growth of brand awareness, business reputation, and industry authority
• Short turnaround time on customer servicing
• Streamlined promotion of new products
• Generate organic conversation, comments, and shares
• Ability to integrate brand storytelling into product posts
• High return on investment due to affordable social media marketing

Personalize your Approach

One of the greatest advantages of using social media to push your products on the market is the freedom to personalize your content. As we all know, social media is popularly used for interpersonal networking, communication, content sharing, and other non-business activities. This makes personalization and social listening activities prior to your product description writing highly valuable.

Personal pronouns and a casual tone of voice will ensure that your product descriptions are accepted as a natural part of native advertisement rather than content that doesn’t belong on social media. You can go a step further and refine different personas based on the target audience you aim to attract with specific products. After all, millennials, teens and elderly social media users will respond differently to each product post they see on the platform – know your audience and personalize your approach.

Keep it Short & Informative

Social media platforms are some of the best and worst places to promote your products and services due to skimming. Social media news feeds are often riddled with dozens of new posts, social information, and content which users want to digest as fast as possible. This is why you should keep your product descriptions and posts as short and as informative as possible.

Don’t write multiple paragraphs of information in regards to your product on social media. Instead, offer a small snippet of your sales pitch with an outbound link which will take interested customers to your website or eCommerce store. Likewise, the writing you do provide should offer tangible and informative resources to the reader which will help them weigh whether or not to follow up on the link. Keep the product descriptions to the point and it will reflect in their performance.

Benefits over Features

It’s logical that you would like to present your products and services from a technical, data-driven standpoint to potential customers – however, that’s not always the best approach. Given the casual nature of social media platforms, users are bound to respond better to the benefits of products and services over technical features. According to Dream Grow, 71% of customers who’ve experienced positive social media engagement with a brand will likely recommend it to their friends and family while 90% of social media users already actively engage with brands and businesses.

Make sure to open your sales pitches with the benefits of your products and services in terms of what they can do for your users. A clear example of this can be found in the sales of microwaves or toasters – users don’t care about electric power or type of chip that’s inside; they care about how good their food will taste. Reserve the features for product description pages themselves on your website or eCommerce store while focusing on real-world applications and household benefits in the opening sales pitch to maximize your content’s efficiency.

Create Complementary Multimedia

One of the strongest communication channels on social media is in the visuals. Multimedia content such as professional photography, video demonstrations, customer reviews as well as influencer testimonials can all be used to your social media advantage. Multimedia will ensure that users stop skimming through their news feed and stop to see what type of content you’ve prepared for their convenience.

Make sure to always use original content which is representative of your products or services to avoid any copyright infringement as an online business. Given that you are using social media to promote your products, multimedia optimization should be an afterthought due to optimization algorithms already present on social media platforms. Complement your product descriptions with multimedia and you will undoubtedly achieve your social media sales targets sooner rather than later.

Integrate Trending Keywords

When it comes to technical content writing optimization, keywords should find their way into your product descriptions. Keywords are typically associated with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in terms of organic search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

However, they can be very effective in helping you reach relevant customers through social media due to automated targeting algorithms which personalize ads based on user interactions. If someone searches for “mini blender” on their browsers, they will be presented with your mini blender ads in the close future and take the offer into serious consideration. Platforms such as Google Keywords Planner and SEM Rush can be used to your benefit when it comes to keyword selection and customer targeting – make sure to check them out.

Strategic Calls to Action

Lastly, calls to action are one of the most efficient tools when it comes to stopping potential customers in their news feed scrolling habits. Calls to action are a tried-and-tested marketing strategy which revolves around directing a potential customer into a specific action. For example, “Contact us now and receive a discount!” is a typical but very efficient call to action which can bring an advantage to your product description writing.

The types of calls to action you can write are limited only by your creativity and the products or services you aim to push to the market. They should always be short and entice some form of an emotional response from the reader, however. This can be achieved through mentioning time-limited benefits, placement of exclamation points in the call to action and other offers centered on the customer’s gain. Make sure to integrate some form of calls to action into your social media posts and product descriptions themselves to encourage users into taking action in regards to your sales offer now and not later.

In Summary

There are a plethora of ways in which you can write product descriptions in order to increase sales on social media platforms. Whether you opt for short and informative writing or rely on multimedia content or time-limited offers, social media sales will definitely up your business’ revenue going forward.

Now that we have listed and discussed several ways in which product description writing can be adjusted for social media, let’s hear it from you. What are your thoughts and experiences in regards to social media sales and product description writing? Do you have any other tips or guidelines to share with the community? Let us know in the comments section below.