Your social media content has to knock the socks off your audience. You may have acquired an enviable number of followers to your Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr channels, but the only thing that is going to keep them there is great content.
If you can provide compelling videos, articles, tweets, pictures, posts and updates that informs, educates and entertains, you will reach a state of social media marketing nirvana. Namely, generating positive word of mouth about you and your company. You will enhance your reputation as a thought leader, a go-to person in your industry.
Your content should maintain a good balance between your own original material and other people’s. It’s all about becoming a terrific resource. However, one of the biggest challenges facing small business owners in the digital domain is being able to come up with a continuous fresh supply of content ideas for social media.
According to the B2B Marketing Trends Survey by Curata, 75% of marketers don’t have enough time to create custom content for social media. But the small business owner doesn’t have to go it alone. Effective content marketing utilizes material from a number of different sources.
So, here’s how you can generate great articles, videos and posts and cherry-pick the best that’s out there for your industry genre:
Look at red hot issues in your field – what is everybody in your industry talking about at the moment? Are there hot-button issues that just won’t go away? Read what people are saying and see if you are able to offer a different perspective. Join web forums and LinkedIn groups to discover what’s vexing people in your industry.
Attend industry events – every week there are offline and online meets, conferences and events. Sign up to a few to see what new ideas are bubbling through.
Ask your audience – don’t be backward about coming forward. Some people assume they know what their audience wants, but they’re not always correct. Compile a list of topic areas and ask your followers to pick their top three.
Conduct interviews – reach out to your satisfied customers and ask for interviews that could form the basis of good case histories. You could also approach notable people in your field.
Curate content – identify relevant material from respected sources. Fortunately, there are a number of tools that will save you from sifting through the torrent of information on the Internet. Set up Google alerts for topics related to your niche. You can arrange an alert for once a day, every few hours or even as soon as the content is published.
Subscribe to industry blogs. You can find them on Technorati.com. Use Alltop, a news aggregator that covers the principle blogs and websites on just about any topic under the sun. Other news aggregators to consider are Popurls and Digg.
Be sure to curate content from a variety of sources. If your followers see that this republished material is coming from the same one or two places all the time, then they’ll eventually cut you out of the equation and go straight to them.
Have your say too – Instead of simply republishing content from other sources, add your own commentary. Put the piece in context and explain why it is important and relevant to your readers.
From MavSocial | Social Media Marketing Software for Business
