How often have you sat down and thought: "I should really post something, but I don't know what..."? Probably a couple of times. Here are some ideas you can use to not run out of ideas for interesting social media posts.
If you're reading this, we hope you're convinced that a good online presence is crucial for your business. If not, get in touch with your Customer Success Manager 😉
The quality of your social media posts will attract the right audience, because the content you're posting will be highly relevant and valuable for them. Just make sure that you keep hitting that sweet spot. You can find it here:
What can you do?
Whatever you choose to post, just keep this question in the back of your head: is this relevant for my audience? If the answer is no, then don't post it.
1. Create a Framework
Consistency makes it easier for you to plan your social media posts + if you do it right, it's super valuable for your audience. Try to think about recurring topics, such as:
Educational
Tip of the week
Question of the Month
A-B-C of your expertise
Promotional
Service highlight
Customer of the month
Employees & Workplace
Employee of the Month
Entertainingand inspiring
Funny story of the month
Quote of the day
Tip: in the schedule in Willow you can make a recurring topic.
Go to Schedule > Month > Add Task > Choose your category and name your post > Pick weekly or monthly depending on how many times you want it to appear.
2. Make use of 'Days of ...'
Christmas, Easter, Mothers' Day, Chocolate Soufflé Day (yes, google it and thank us later) ...
It can be a perfect moment to tell your audience something nice.
3. Repurpose your content
You probably have more content lying around than you think, but did you use it to the bone?
1 blog post, 5 social media posts
Overtime some evergreen blogs might start bringing in regular traffic to your website through organic search, or through backlinks from other websites. Have you repurposed them already in several social media posts?
Quote/highlight: you probably have this one killer sentence lined up in your blog post. It's perfect to create a social media post around this. Interview? Use a quote and a picture from the person. Educational blog? Highlight an interesting sentence.
Infographic: visual data works. And it's fun to create. If you have a data driven blogpost, make sure to turn it into an infographic and upload it to your social media. (Canva has some great infographic templates btw)
LinkedIn Article: If you post the article through your Linkedin personal profile, and not as a business, it has the opportunity to have a bigger impact. People trust other people more readily than businesses. Linkedin's algorithm recognizes that, so your content is seen by more people in the feed. Make sure to link to the full blog on your website.
Video: Super easy to do! Plugging the URL of your blog into Lumen5 will auto-generate a short video from the blog. You can change the videos, template, design, and text to polish it before publishing it to your channels.
Carousel post: They work best on LinkedIn and Instagram. To repurpose your blog into a carousel, break it down into it's 8-9 main bullet points, and then create a carousel. Remember to link back to your original blog in the caption or in the comments, and to save one image in the carousel to create a call-to-action.
Bonus tip: regularly updating your existing blogs on your website is good for SEO. It shows Google that this piece of content is still relevant.
1 video, 5 social media posts
Long form videos such as interviews, talks, documentaries, and case studies can be great sources of repurposed content. They're full of value, they're highly relevant to your audience and they're aligned to your business.
Teaser video: Before you actually release the longform video, you can increase the number of views it will get by preparing your audience for it.
30 sec video: Cut out an interesting part and highlight it on your social media
GIF: You can import your original Youtube video into Giphy's gif maker and then crop a small portion of it to use as a gif.
Quote: Pick a simple idea or a quote from the video, put it in a template in Canva, and schedule it on your social media. You can link to the original video in the caption or in the comments too to get more traffic to it.
Stories: It couldn't hurt to extract vertical videos from your main video using a tool like Kapwing to crop it to the right size, and post it on the relevant social media channels to reach a wider audience.
Bonus tips: you can also use it on your website in multiple ways:
Video transcript: the transcript can help you post it as a blog on your website. This can 1. increase search traffic coming to your website, and 2. help your audience who might want to skim through your content rather than have to sit through a long video. Also: you can post that blog on social meida.
Podcast: You can simply separate the audio from the video (if it's useful without visuals) using Audacity or convert it to mp3 and then upload it as a podcast through your preferred podcasting platform. Tada: new thing to post about.
4. Ask your audience
They won't bite. No, seriously, you could be surprised by how willing they are to share something with you.
Instagram is easy: just add an Instagram Sticker to your story
LinkedIn and Facebook: create a nice looking visual with the question in it and await the answers
Twitter: try out 'Ask me anything'
5. Ask yourself some questions
What is the biggest struggle for my audience I can help them with?
What are the questions from customers that I keep getting?
What are the most common mistakes your clients make and you keep giving them advice about?
How can people save time/money/... when they work with you?
What is the biggest myth in your area of expertise?
What is an interesting fact about your industry you can share?
What are interesting numbers you can share about your field of work?
What is changing in your industry? And what do you expect to change in the coming months?
...
If you can answer these questions, you'll probably have a ton of ideas to make social media posts about.
6. Keep your eyes open
Steal with your eyes: when scrolling to your feed, ask yourself 'Can I do something interesting with this post?' Also, go and follow interesting people in your industry and be inspired.
Keep a list: OneNote, Trello, Notion ... whatever tool you like to use. Keep a list of all your ideas. When you're working on your social media calendar, tap into that knowledge.
Get inspired by industry news: everything changes so quickly, so keep an eye on those changes. In Willow you can do so by following the topics you and your audience want to know more about in the News section.
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