Most social media and digital marketing experts will tell you that you need to regularly post and share interesting and valuable content with your social media followers. This keeps them engaged, keeps you relevant and positions you as a leader in your field.
But where do you find such compelling content, and what kind of thing should you be sharing? Here are some top tips to save you time and improve the quality of the content you’re posting:
- Make use of tools, apps and features. There are absolutely loads of tools designed for this very purpose – to root out new stories and content before it hits its peak, based on keywords you suggest. Among the best are Trendspottr, SmartBrief, Hootsuite’s Suggested Content feature and Flipboard, although UpCity has lots of other suggestions for curated content, automatic keyword-triggered updates and searchable stories.
- Ask around. If you’re passionate about your industry, you’re likely to spend extra out-of-work time reading industry articles and engaging with other professionals on Twitter. The chances are, your colleagues do this too, so ask them to share or email you links to anything interesting they find.
- Keep an eye on the comments. If you have an active community commenting on your blog, or on your social networks, this is where you may get ideas for future stories. Someone may post a link to further reading, or simply make an argument for a point you hadn’t considered – but that your audience will definitely be interested in.
- Work with the most shareable content forms. This means videos, images, GIFs, lists, interviews and ‘something of the year’ or ‘question of the week’ type posts. They’re usually easy to find, or to create yourself. This shouldn’t be all you share, but these little ‘snackable’ bites of content are a good way to keep your accounts updated between weightier content postings.
- Create your own content. Research carried out in 2014 found that as many as 78% of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) believe that custom content is the future of digital marketing, and that has indeed started to become a reality. Users’ expectations with regards to unique content are sky high, and many won’t be satisfied with rehashes of the same stories or sharing of content which has already gone viral. They’ve seen it all before, but if you can create something new then you can really catch their attention. As for what you can create, there are lots of options. Arrange an interview with an industry professional, carry out your own research and create and infographic, or simply create a series of blogs from a more personal ‘expert’ perspective.
Whatever you do to find shareable content, you should always be putting your own spin on it – applying it to your industry or posing new questions about it. There’s no value in copying or simply pressing ‘retweet’, so do something new.
