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Are You Sharing the Right Type of Content?

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social media content

Sharing and promoting content that your target users are going to be interested in is key when it comes to having a successful social media strategy. It is not a good use of time and resources to post any content that users won’t find interesting or may make you or your business look unprofessional. For example, including an unrelated or uninteresting link with commentary that is full of typos isn’t going to give your audience a good impression of your company online (and sometimes, as a whole).

 

To find the right type of content to share, check out competitors’ pages (but do not copy them) as well as pages that you yourself find interesting as a member of the industry you are in. Sometimes being aware of what you find interesting and sharing it is all it takes to get started.

 

In addition, asking coworkers and online users themselves what type of content they’d like to see can be a very enlightening experience. They may have ideas or suggestions that you haven’t thought of before, or they may say they like something that you thought wasn’t popular.

 

To find out the best type of content that is best for your social media marketing campaigns and publishing campaign, test different types of content to see what gets the most clicks or engagement. It’s also important not to over think it. Not surprisingly, content about improving your LinkedIn profile goes over great on LinkedIn, and comics or funny news pieces can usually be popular on Facebook. Additionally, on Twitter, content that has really interesting titles, such as “5 Mistakes You’re Making While Networking” will get more interest than something like, “Common Networking Mistakes”.  These are all over-arching factors to take into consideration, as well as finding more specific niche topics for your business.

 

When sharing content, use link shorteners that have analytics attached to them when possible (such as cli.gs or bit.ly links). This will help you track shares, clicks and referral sources from your shared social media links. This just provides even more information that makes it possible to have the most targeted social media publishing calendar that is possible.

 

Along with the type of content, timeliness is also important. Because social media is very focused on the now, be sure to only share content that is relevant and timely to that day. For instance, when Michael Jackson passed away, it just wouldn’t be in good taste to post a news story announcing his death two days later. Everyone already knew. It will make your business seem out of the loop and just struggling to keep up– not an image you want to promote.

 

How to Find Social Media Posting Ideas

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how to find social media content

Social media is a great marketing tool to keep up with current and potential customers. However, just with most other digital marketing mediums (like your online advertising or blog), it needs to be updated regularly. One hurdle that many employees who are tasked with the social media content publishing calendar fail to realize is the sheer amount of content their accounts may need each week.

Luckily, there are several places online to find great applicable articles and engaging content that can be used as posting material on sites like Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.

Google News & Alerts

Google is a great place to find fresh content to share. Set up Google Alerts to get an instant, daily, or weekly email of search engine or news results based on certain keywords. Additionally, you can search news.google.com for the most current event stories in your industry. Google Blogs can also be used in this aspect as well.

Message Boards & Forums

Use a message board or forum search engine like boardtracker.com, Omgili, or boardreader.com. Again using keywords relevant to your industry, you can find out what people are actually talking about online instead of relying on popular blogs or news sites to tell you.

Common Shared Holidays

One easy way to fill up a social media publishing calendar is to comment on fun or popular holidays that your target audience or demographic may be celebrating. This could include Groundhog’s Day, Labor Day, etc. Be sure to respect religions. Posting a fun image or trivia questions for holidays can be a fun and engaging way to interact with your social media community.

Other Employees or Community Members

Don’t let the burden of finding content always lay on your shoulders. Ask other coworkers or community members involved with your organization for posting ideas or questions. Many times, someone not involved in the day to day posting of social media content may think of something you hadn’t.

These are some of the places to find great content for your social media publishing calendar. Oftentimes, subscribing to blogs in your industry, creating your own blog posts to share online, and reading books and other materials about applicable issues and topics that are related to your business can also give you the content ideas you are needing.

When you do find a good idea to share, schedule out the social media on a service like Buffer or keep it in a spreadsheet. That way you have a list of ideas ready to go when you are feeling stuck.

Blogging Fear: Just Start Writing

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Recently, I was consulting with a business owner about starting her own blog. Darren Rowse, Problogger, referred her to me, and so I was excited to get started. One of my biggest passions is to teach, and there is nothing I love more than to see a business jumping into the blogging world.

She was very hesitant though. She had looked at many blogs and was awestruck by their high quality content, amazing editing, striking use of images, and she felt like competing would be hard. Then I told her that the blogs she was comparing herself to were years old. Both bloggers had already done hundreds of posts, and had refined their writing style, use of images, and editing over that period of time.

She was just starting out and like anything, blogging requires time, effort and practice to do amazingly. She begrudgingly started writing a post, and saved it as a draft for me to look over. Other than a few stylistic things like making some text bold and italics, the post looked great. She looked it over again and was finally ready to publish it. Nervously, she wanted to take it back.

We all have those doubts, those questions. “What if others think it is horrible? What if it doesn’t make sense to them?” In the end though, while the blogging is about helping build her business and brand, it is also an archive of her life as a businesswoman and should cater to her own desires first.

Quickly, the “bug” of publishing content online grew, and she was always thinking about what to put on the blog next.

This whole experience made me wonder if the issue with blogging is that too many people expect to be experts on day one. When you had your first day of school, did you know everything in the text books? When you started your first real job, were you the number one expert in your field? No! So why should blogging be any different? Be it as a hobby, career, or a promotional tool, blogging is like any other task from riding a bike, to building a business: it takes practice to do well.

Don’t let your fear stop you from producing content. Even if it doesn’t appeal to everyone, I highly doubt that with over six billion people living on the planet, that you won’t make a connection with at least one of them, and if you are really shy about your content, don’t promote your blog, just post what interests you. Use your blog as a tool to express yourself, and let come what may. It is your island, you control the design, content, comments, and more. Fear nothing, and get blogging!