Copywriting For Social Media

One of my big regrets in my time in the advertising agency world is that I never seemed to have enough time to figure out a good way to talk to the creatives at my former agency about social media. My door was always open, but I was covered up with projects, as were they. So when it came time to look at the social media concepts for our clients, most of the eyes looked my way.

I’ve always maintained that advertising creatives are far better than me for coming up with the “big idea.” It’s kind of what they’re trained to do. Sure, I’ve been able to produce a few of my own through the years, but leaving your winning social media concepts up to one guy’s (or gal’s) brain isn’t a sustainable approach. Even as my staff grew, we were PR folks, SEO folks and technology folks. We weren’t creative concept folks.

Still, there was (and I assume still is) a disconnect in a lot of advertising creatives (art directors and copywriters) and the world of social media. Some have made the transition. Still others are still finding their way.

One of my former creative colleagues emailed me recently and asked my take on copywriting for social media. Below is a more polished version of my response.