Social media influences a buyer’s decision. It’s important that your company is a part of the social media fun if success is destined for your future. These sites provide 24-hour access to customers and leads but also highlights your brand as an industry-leading name. Leaving you standing head and shoulders above the competition. Dozens of social media sites provide the chance to interact with your audience in a variety of fun ways. Done correctly, marketing via social media can put your company on a pedestal high above the competition.
According to statistics, an estimated 2.77 billion people around the world use social media sites. Many of these users include business owners looking to reach their audience. More than 73% of all businesses say they use social media to reach out to their target audience. Social media is the preferred way of contact for many people and with the opportunity to reach so many people in a fun, virtually effortless manner, why not include yourself in on the fun?
How to Find Great Social Media Content
Browse the sources below if you need help choosing topics for your social media content. Choosing the best content to share with your audience ensures they stick around for more. They’ll want to know more about your business and what you offer and they’ll interact and engage with your site as they tell their friends, neighbors, and others that your business exists. Each source offers insight into trending topics and information relevant to your audience, regardless of the industry you serve. It’s ideal to use a few different resources for the best results. The more resources used, the more valuable content you’ll find to introduce to your audience and leads.
A few of the best techniques to use to find and create content for your social media pages include:
- Google News: Google search engine is used by more than 1.17 billion people each day. To provide customized content to web searchers, Google separates information by category. Google News is one such category. Enter a keyword into the search box (i.e. fashion, runway, SEO) under the ‘News’ heading on the top of the search engine page to find the latest news headlines surrounding the keyword. You may also sign up to receive alerts sent to your email box.
- Social Media: Search your favorite social media sites to learn more about the topics and information your competition is posting. While you don’t want to ‘steal’ their posts, it can give you insight into the best topics to post. Put your own spin into any content that is found that you like and wish to share with your audience. Remember, original content is a must, wherever you choose to post. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Tumblr are some of the best social media sites to use for this purpose.
- Blogs: It seems that everyone has a blog these days. Why not search your favorite blogs to gather content ideas and news to use on your pages? It’s a great way to learn more about popular topics that people want to read about, but keep in mind that the more original your topics, the more interest you’ll generate in the post. Countless blogs are available to read and gain inspiration from, so use them all to your benefit.
- What’s on Your Mind?: Sometimes the best content to post on your social media accounts comes from within your own mind. What is a topic of interest to you that you’d like to share with others? Are there product/service/company questions that you’d like your community to answer? Do you need to gather opinions? If you were in the customer’s shoes, what information would you like to know to make an informed decision? This could certainly turn into an amazing social media post.
Obviously, there are many other sources of information out there, but the above are among the best. Use these resources to your advantage whenever you need new ideas and topics to interest your customers.
Tips for Social Media Success
In addition to using the above sources to find inspiration for your social media content, keep these tips in mind to further ensure your posts reach the largest possible audience.
- Ask your fans what they want to see on your pages.
- Respond to mentions and tags. Get the conversation going whenever possible!
- Use photos with your posts. People are more likely to pay attention to the post if a picture is included, considering that 79% of all readers only skim content and choose select sentences to read.
- The Inverted Pyramid Structure works marvelously to create social media posts. This structure defines detailing the quintessential detail first to attract the reader’s attention.
- Controversial topics are fine, but leverage them with non-controversial topics and be prepared to handle a variety of comments, emotions, and reactions to such a post.
- Any content posted on social media should invoke emotion. The exact type of emotion you want to invoke varies according to the type of information you wish to share. Make sure that you consider emotions when creating your posts.
Use the above sources when choosing content to post on your social media pages to ensure your page is one that your leads and customers identify with and that is exciting enough for participation. It may seem like a lot of hard work, but rest assured that once you get into the swing of things and learn the things that your audience likes and wants to see, posting amazing content becomes much easier. It’s important to pique the curiosity of your social media page visitors and that starts by posting the related content they want to see. The ideas above are a few of the best ways to gather inspiration for your social media posts. Use them to your advantage!
