Now you’ve learned how to create the prefect campaign and customizable calendar. How do you find mind-blowing content ideas for social media?
Sometimes, coming up with content ideas for your social media pages can be challenging, especially when you have to post every day across multiple social media platforms.
Quality and informative content are what attract and keep your audience glued to your social media pages.
And that also will make them engage with your posts and look forward to more interesting content from you — and maybe become a customer.
But now, here’s the thing. How can you find content ideas to post on your different social media platforms with ease?
These techniques that I’m about to share have helped to resolve this issue. In this post, you’ll learn how to generate content for your audience. Let’s go.
1. Use Research Tools
One of the multiple ways that help brand owners find content for their social media pages is through content research tools like Hubspot, Sprout Social, BuzzSumo, AnswerThePublic, etc.
BuzzSumo is like Google. When you search for a keyword on BuzzSumo, it will return results based on popular topics and content related to the keyword.
It also breaks down the share figure by networks. So you can see content and know the social media platform where they have more popularity, whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
For instance, if you want to see the types of articles that are popular on Twitter, you can tap the “Twitter Shares.”
BuzzSumo will then sort the articles according to the number of shares on Twitter.
2. Monitor Your Competitors
Another way to find content ideas is to keep a look on the pages of top competitors in your niche to see the type of content they post.
This is one of the best ways to come up with content ideas. It’s not a crime to use the concepts of your competitors for idea generation.
But you would want to make your content as unique as possible from theirs.
You can study the pages of your top competitors and see what is working for them. Applying a similar strategy to your page might make a difference for you.
3. Use Google Alerts
One good way to get content ideas for social media posts is to use Google alerts.
Google Alerts is a tool that enables you to receive email notifications when information relevant to your niche or industry has been published on the web.
Google alerts also let you decide on the frequency of these email notifications.
You can choose whether to share these articles on your social media pages or create unique content based on these articles and add your commentary and opinion.
An added advantage of receiving alerts is that you will be sharing new information, most likely before others in your industry.
That’s because you receive alerts as soon as these articles are published. This ensures that you avoid sharing outdated information with your audience.
To set up Google alerts, go to google.com/alerts. Type in the keyword you wish to receive alerts for, then select the email address you want the alerts to be sent to.
4. Use Analytics
One of the ways to know what works for you or what your audience is to make use of your social media.
You can check Facebook analytics, Twitter analytics, Instagram analytics, or any other analytics, depending on which social networking you use.
Social media analytics will help you know the contents that have generated more engagements and impressions.
You can rank how relevant your posts are to your audience according to their different number of engagements. The more engagement a post gets, the more relevant it is to your audience.
For example, when you go to your Facebook page and click on insight, you will see a grade with all your posts and a column that shows the engagement each post receives.
With this insight, you will want to create more contents that are similar to your best-performing posts.
5. Survey Your Audience
Asking questions or conducting polls on your social media profiles are resourceful ways of getting your audience’s opinions.
For instance, “What content would you love to see from us?” If it’s open-ended replies you want, posting a question will be nice.
In a situation where you have a rough idea of what might be interesting to your audience, you could run a poll listing a few options.
6. Check Forums
Some might consider forums to be some sort of old school in today’s world of the internet, but they are still popular and relevant.
Forums are one of the easiest means for people to have public conversations online, just as they do in real life.
There are general forums like Reddit, Quora, etc. But they are also forums for just about every niche and industry.
To find a forum for your industry, you can go to google and search for your industry forum (e.g., Architectural forum), and you will likely see at least one or probably a handful.
7. Frequently Asked Questions
Another interesting way to find social media post ideas is to check the frequently asked questions from your audience.
You can look through the comments people drop on your post or your competitors’ posts.
You can also check the emails you receive from your clients or audience members. Then simply create content that answers these questions.
For example, if you are in the cake baking industry and people frequently ask questions about how to make red velvet cake, then some of your posts should focus on sharing red velvet cake recipes.
Conclusion
Remember, when posting on social media, always put quality ahead of quantity. Make sure that you post relevant contents that are also informative and entertaining.
And also follow the 80/20 rule. That is, 80% of your posts are not promotional, and only 20% of your posts are promotional.
Over-promoting on social media won’t allow you to get the respect and trust of your audience, which is important to be able to convert them into leads and sales.
