We understand that for small businesses, finding new content – whether that be news articles, funny facts and statistics, relevant material from blogs or other social accounts, or actual news and information from your office – can be hard work, and it may put you off from running your own social media handles.
In this post, we’ve put together just some of the ways in which you can source content for your social media posts, and take your social media strategy to the next level.
Be proactive in the workplace
As a small business owner, finding the time to manage your own social media accounts can be hard work, but by making some simple changes to your working day and making social media a habit, you’ll quickly be able to fit it into your schedule and create lots of original high-quality content that you can share from your accounts.
One of the ways to do that is to create your own videos or take images in the office. People love to see a ‘behind the scenes’ look at a business, as it helps you to connect to your audience and is more likely to be liked and retweeted than a generic blog post or link.
Indeed, the more original content you can create, the better your social media strategy will become, so think about taking pictures at every available opportunity.
Whenever you’re celebrating a birthday in the office, running an event for charity or a special cause, welcoming a new client or out and about as a company, take a snap and share it with the world. If you’re self-employed, you may even want to think about sharing some of your personal life, whether that be out on a walk on a cold winter’s day, or sharing your thoughts on the latest episode of your favourite TV show.
These techniques will increase engagement and help to set your business apart from your competitors on social media, increasing shares and conversions.
Get your audience involved
If you’re really struggling to come up with new ideas for your social media channels, then you could look to get your audience involved.
User-generated content can take your business to the next level, as it not only encourages your customers to share images, videos and posts about your business on their own social media accounts (therefore increasing your reach, encouraging new people to like and interact with your page), but it gives you a bank of great content to share on your channels, without doing any of the hard graft yourself.
There are a few ways to do this.
Running a competition is one of the best. You could ask your audience to post a selfie with your product, offering a prize to the winner.
One Stop Halloween competition on Twitter
That way, you’ll have lots of pictures to share on your Instagram feed, as One Stop did on Twitter. Similar campaigns work well for small businesses that have already established an audience on social media, so give the technique a go.
The competition attracted a lot of engagemen
See what competitors are doing
One of the best ways to find new content ideas for your business is to see what your competition is doing.
Of course, we’re not suggesting that you steal their content and pass it off as your own, but you can see what sort of content performs well and generates likes and shares, and post something similar on your own accounts to attract more attention.
If you see that a competitor always shares memes and funny content, then you could source your own using Tumblr or Reddit.
If they regularly post news articles from their company site, then you could consider upping your content marketing and posting more blog posts on your site or looking for similar content on third-party, non-competing blogs and news outlets.
If your competitors post lots of images and videos from their office, then make sure you do the same. And if they’re posting lots of custom graphics, then sign up for an account on Canva and make your own high-quality posts using your company branding and logo for maximum effect.
Curate a list of news websites
Another great way to find relevant content for your company accounts is to curate a list of news outlets and websites that you can refer back to.
You could add them to your bookmarks, follow them on Twitter to be updated whenever they post new content or subscribe to their mailing lists.
Another way is to set up an RSS aggregator and have new content delivered to your feed.
You can find the best blogs for your niche through a simple Google News search. In the social media world, for example, then blogs such as Social Media Examiner, Sprout Social, HubSpot, Mashable, TechCrunch and Social Media Today will likely be at the top of our list.
You may want to add more general news outlets like BBC News, Sky News and Eureporter to your list so that you can be alerted when anything happens in your niche.
If you have an account on Buffer to schedule your social media posts, you can even add blogs to your account and add them to your channels in seconds.
Go to Content Inbox, Add or Remove Feeds, and start typing in the blog you’d like to add to your list.
Setting up RSS feeds on Buffer
You can then visit the Content Inbox section of your Buffer account as and when you’d like, adding blogs and news to your social media buffers to keep your audience updated and your channels ticking over.
Wrapping up
There’s no denying that sourcing original content can be hard work, but with some help and a little motivation, you can do it.
If you really don’t have the time or inclination, though, don’t forget that 99social offers affordable social media management from just £99 per month.
Get in touch with the team today on 07517 560939 to find out more, and check back soon for more blogs.