How often did it happen to you that you had no idea what to write about? Your boss tells you to provide social media content for all the platforms asap.
Great! What kind of post though? Are your ideas spilling over or rather have the infamous writer’s block? You go through your notes if you have written down any great ideas lately that could start you off.
But nothing..So what is your next step? Take a deep breath, go outside to refresh your mind. Maybe have a coffee. Then take the time to read this article.
It is aimed to give you a quick glance over the different possibilities where to get content from and what content is the best to get the most engagement. Lastly it will give you advice on how to use the different social media platforms to make the most out of your content.
Let’s get started and bring value to our readers
Matter of the fact, you have to accept this current state of moment. There is nothing you can do except going crazy. And it is okay.
I have been there myself quite often now and many other great content creators. They all know that feeling and have their own perspective on how to overcome those issues.
That got me into thinking. How can I help those that face these problems and have no idea where to get their social media content from if needed.
Types of content
You can have many different types of content for your social media marketing.
- Original Social Media Content that focuses on your most important readers.
- You want to write content for your most important and loyal readers.
- Make them feel special and give them a reason to always come back to your website.
- They like your content! Give them more!
- Curated Social Media Content which comes from third-party sources which is respected and trusted.
- Never forget to make your content to be relevant for your most important and loyal readers
- Client Social Media Content that is related to what you are doing and how you have helped your clients.
- Show the benefits of what you are doing
- Conduct interviews with great founders or key employees that enjoyed fantastic success stories.
- Deliver the value that they have created to your visitors
- Show community content to display their involvement to your readers
Now you understand what type of social media content you can create for your online marketing. Let’s start to talk about where to get it from.
This list will you get your content from many different sources. You can share it and get inspirations for your own articles. One common technique is the skyscraper technique which I will explain later.
Google Alert
Yes, another product from Google that will help change your life. It is a strong tool that keeps track of topics and trend with your defined keywords.
You will receive a personalized email with up-to-date information. You can use this to share on your social media platforms.
Drumup
Drumup is a platform that helps you to receive personalized social media content with specific keywords.
What is great about it is that you can set negative keywords. So you avoid sharing content from your competition on your social media platforms.
This tool not only provides you with the newest content on the web. It even lets you schedule your content for your social media platforms.
Reuse your content
Have you just recently created some social media content which did not receive much engagement. I am sure that you this disappoints you as you definitely want people to read your piece of art.
Just repost, retweet or reblog it. You have to follow the performance of your work to either decide if enough is enough or you need to push it harder. But do not just use it once and then never again.
Cannot mention it enough: Reuse your social media content
For example, here at Web Courses Bangkok we just recently shot an interview. This gave us about 20 minutes video material, that we can use.
Just uploading this whole piece on YouTube would not get enough engagement. So we will upload many different parts of it. This gives us about 2-3 different pieces of content instead of one.
Have you figured out how to use social media streaming? If you have used it for your business yet, do not forget to upload the video on YouTube or any other platform.
Once again, reuse your social media content and tweet it out to the world. Let everyone know you have some new content.
Guest bloggers
Guest bloggers and top influencers can be of high value. They can be your lifebelt in the middle of an ocean. What I mean is that they already have a huge follower base. You can be sure that they will let their audience now that they have a guest blog written on your page. I promise, your visits will increase and your audience will thank you for seeing such an article on your social media platforms.
Paid freelancers
You don’t always have the time to research your articles and write them in a SEO-friendly way. Don’t shy away from asking help and hire some freelancers. Just be careful and be sure that they know your industry, audience and company. They need to write content that is relevant for your audience.
When you use services such as freelancer.com, upwork.com or fiverr.com choose wisely and you will be rewarded with great work. Take your time researching and avoid common issues with freelancers.
Other tips & tricks
Don’t forget to use the famous 80/20 rule for your social media strategy. Never ever forget it. To refresh your mind, it means that only 20% of your published content you will use to promote your brand.
The other 80% is about educating your audience. Remember, always write content that is relevant for your audience. If you take a look at our Facebook Page, you will see this rule at best practice.
The 80/20 rule is so great that you can even apply to the time invested writing and promoting your content. Try to use only 20% of your time writing an article and use 80% to promote it. Imagine you already had 5000 views on your article.
Why spent time writing new content when you know already that your latest article had a great impact? Repost, promote it more. Guaranteed there are more people out there that will like to read it.
Skyscraper technique
The steps of this technique are very, very simple. First, you have to find an awesome article. Then make it even better! Next, reach out to the right people.
You have to find content that already generated a great amount of links from many domains. How to do that?
Ahref
First, find a popular website within your industry that generates a lot of great social media content. Type the URL in Ahref and look for content that has more than 25 links to it. Use those articles for your skyscraper technique.
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo lets you help find content. Enter any keyword of your choice. Choose past year and get back a nice, great list of content that have been published last year. Again, use the skyscraper technique to make your own, even better articles.
Google Search
Good, old Google. Enter any keyword with a high competition of your choice and relevant to your audience. Look at the first ten articles and insert the URL’s in Ahref or MajesticSEO. Check for articles that have links from more than 25 different domains. You know what you have to do. Improve them with the skyscraper technique.
What’s following is that you have to make it even better. Even longer. Give it the extra special content worth reading. Have you seen those articles with massive lists of “The 101 best Social Media Tools”? Most likely it is just a list!
Now take this list, add more points to the list and add a description to each one of those tools. You just made an awesome article super-awesome.
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Start Sharing
It is the biggest social media platform out there. With more than 1 billion user between the age of 25 and 54, it is a network that you must use. Businesses use Facebook to build brand loyalty and relationships with their target audience.
The best time to post on Facebook is between 1pm and 3pm. You will get the most shares and clicks during that period of time. Especially on Thursday and Friday.
Buddy Media said it perfectly: “The less people want to be at work, the more they are on Facebook!”
If you want figure out the best post timing for your specific audience, use Fanpage Karma. It is free to use for one page. It will analyze your social media page and give you great insights.
Twitter is a great platform to share your news and articles that you have written or received. It is a easy tool to keep in touch with your target audience and start conversations. The downside is the limit of characters you can use. Your message must be on point and clear.
Timing the tweets varies between B2B and B2C. While B2B has the highest engagements during weekdays, B2B has it on Wednesday and on weekends. In general, at 5pm you have the most retweets and at either 12pm or 6pm you will have the highest click-through-rate.
You can optimize the social growth of your Twitter at Followerwonk from Moz. You will receive insights for your specific follower base and it is free to use.
YouTube
YouTube just like Facebook has more than 1 billion user and is popular for “Do-It-Yourself” or “How-to” videos. Companies use it to increase their brand awareness. Don’t forget to keep your videos short . The longer the video is, the lower is the retention rate. It can be resource intensive to keep a YouTube channel up and running.
If you are a B2B business, then Linkedin is the right choice for you. It is a popular platform for news & articles. Downside is that it only allows limited interactions as you can’t reach out of your network.
It is the perfect platform for B2B communication and therefore, the best times to post content there is during the business hours on weekdays. The best times to post are either early in the morning from 7am to 8am or late afternoon from 5pm to 6pm. You can expect to get the most clicks and shares on a Tuesday between 10 am and 11am.
What’s the best content to share on social media platforms?
Infographics
Infographics are great social media content if you want a lot of shares. “A picture says more than 1000 words” and it is true. It is more appealing to look at an image with the same content that you can find in a plain text. It is easier to catch the information as a reader/viewer.
That is a great example for an infographic. It easily displays the evolution of diversity in online marketing over the years.
Interactive content
Interactive content makes up for a great amount of shares. Your users will enjoy taking quizzes. They are looking for an awesome experience on the internet. An experience that you are able to give them. User will reward you with sharing your content to their friends.
Emotional content
Social media content that awake strong emotions gets shares. It does not matter what your audience is but content should contain emotional language. What emotions do you want to focus on? Just be careful and don’t evoke the wrong emotions that can damage your image.
Images
Just like infographics, any post should contain a images if possible. Content with images is just better. Easy fact. It is more appealing to read. If done in a correct way, it splits the content in nice parts and leads the reader through the content. Images are just better to get shared within your audience’s network instead of a plain text.
Long, useful lists
Create lists! Studies have shown that Lists – posts are on top of the different types of blog posts that get the most shares. List-posts are above “What”, “Why” and “How” posts. We have recently put together a list of 10 Fitness Websites To Inspire Your Web Design. Each list point gives you a quick overview and how the website looks like.
If you like the design, you will continue reading description to get the details on why it is a great design.
Last not but least content that gets a lot of shares are news. Most likely you will not be able to create such a content as it is only for two types of business usually. News companies or niche websites with niche industry news. You keep focusing on creating evergreen content that always stays fresh for your audience.
Why do people even share content in the first place
It’s all about trust (except your content is an exceptionally great posts). Content gets shared because the reader wants to deliver the entertainment to others. It is something that they care about and want to let other people know. They try to define their own character with the content that they shared.
The internet can be a lonely place. A research has shown that people like to share content because it makes them feel more involved in the world. Trying to stay connected with their network is one reason why people like to share content online. 4 out 5 people share content because they like to show their support for the brand. That is great and involves trust.
Source: Media Insight ProjectThis is all great to know but how do you apply this in the creation of your content? It must contain value for your readers. Do you remember how I said in the beginning that your content must be relevant for your audience? You don’t want to waste their time reading a blog posts that is completely off-topic.
Here are the key points summarized for you once again:
- Reuse your social media content
- If you have your own recorded videos ready, split them into different parts
- If you had article posts with low engagement rate, post them again until you get the expected results
- Use drumup.io or Google Alert to always receive up-to-date content from all over the world
- Share them across your social media platforms
- Use freelancer or guest bloggers
- Guest bloggers will come with a great follower base that will come to see the content from your guest blogger
- Freelancer, UpWork or Fiverr offer great services from freelancers
- If you have the time, use the skyscraper technique to create your own, better version of an existing great article
- Make sure it either contains an infographic, a long useful list, emotional content or other images to get the most engagement out of your posts
- Start sharing!!!
Always keep that in mind and you will have readers that enjoy sharing your content. Working with content is fascinating work and of course it’s an important part of how to become a digital marketer.
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