This poses a problem for account owners that need to maintain reach and engagement as a lack of interesting social media content can mean that your followers lose interest and numbers start to drop. If you struggle to come up with ideas to entertain your audience you could alway consider hiring a social media management service that can generate professional on-brand graphics for your social feeds.
If you are managing your own social media accounts, here are some ways you can get new ideas for your social media posts.
Visit forums and follow industry threads
Reading online forums and following relevant threads on places like Reddit and Quora can provide you with a ton of content-worthy information. Pay particular attention to posts that are seeing lots of activity and comments, this could indicate an industry topic that people have a high interest about. Meaning anything you post on the subject has a good chance of success. It can also be worth taking notice of questions that are asked repetitively, this could mean that the answers being sought are not readily available, giving you the chance to respond.
Follow online groups and hashtags
Social media platforms like Linkedin and Twitter provide users with the ability to follow groups and hashtags. Group pages frequently have questions from users about their concerns or challenges that can be converted into content for your social channel. You can leverage this information to build constructive posts for your social media sites to generate interest among your followers. Hashtags can immediately alert you to new content or comments that are being posted, keeping you ahead of the latest and most discussed topics.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a super useful and intelligent tool that shows how many times a particular term has been searched over a specific time period. You can search any industry relevant term to determine how popular it is and identify any activity spikes, which may indicate times that you can benefit from. The nice thing about Google Trends is that information can be filtered by region or country to see how well search terms are performing in that particular area.
Answer the Public
Answer the Public is a versatile tool capable of providing hundreds of different ideas related to a topic for content creators and marketers. It puts a visual spin on data by creating circular visualisations based on data popularity. It breaks terms into dozens of topic ideas and subject headers created as questions, comparisons, and related ideas that can all be used to generate content.
Draw from real life
Take inspiration from real life conversations. If someone tells you about a situation or a problem, think of a way you can use that for your social media content. Put a spin on it to make it relevant to your business and raise interesting questions for your audience. Once you pay attention, the number of posts you can generate this way are almost unlimited.
Industry news sites
Follow news sites and magazines to stay ahead of the latest news stories. News-jacking has become a real marketing tactic, employed to take advantage of traffic gained from big news events. Brands are increasingly news-jacking content to promote interest and user engagement on their own social feeds and websites. It may seem slightly underhand but it is a viable way to gain new ideas for posts and stories.
Buzzsumo
This is a paid, cloud based platform that is similar in its information supply to Google Trends and Answer the Public, but Buzzsumo goes a step further in its data analysis to provide in-depth insights and ideas. It can provide great content ideas and predict engagement and outreach opportunities across social and search platforms, helping to discover new keywords, trending stories and customer questions. It can also help its subscribers to conduct competitor analysis to see how well other content is performing.
Keep up with statistics
People like numbers, especially if they are easy to digest, so keep up with the latest statistics for your industry to create compelling content. The latest stats can often be newsworthy and can generate a high level of interest and engagement among your social media followers. With accurately reported data, it can also help to position your accounts as a trusted information resource. Statistics can also be irresistibly shareable which bodes well for your reach.
Tune in to podcasts
Listening to conversations between other leaders in your niche or industry is a perfect way to find inspiration. Discussions around business, challenges, or common problems all provide social post ideas that can be used on your own channels. Try and follow a few leading podcasts or if you have the time, start one of your own and use your interviews to make social content. Along with making new posts you can also share the podcast or snippets of the chat on your social accounts, or advertise upcoming podcasts beforehand to create a buzz.
Final words
Ideas and inspiration can run out or just evaporate over time and many marketers need to uncover themes or new information to keep users active and engaged. Keeping social channels filled up with content can burn through information at speed, so using resources like the ones mentioned in the article prevents feeds from getting tired or repetitive. Consistent posts that maintain consistently new facts and intelligence can create a better audience response, leading to more followers and shares.
