It’s no secret: if you want interaction on social media, you need to have good content.
Everyone knows it, everyone’s talking about it, but in concrete terms, what actually is it that you should be posting?
Many people have a mental block when it comes to answering this question, and make excuses like “I’ve got nothing to say!” or “Well, I’m not going to tweet about what I had for lunch, am I?!”
And no, you’re certainly not going to be telling people about every minute detail of your life. Instead, you’ll be focusing on the most interesting moments. In any case, you can be sure that you have much more to share than you think.
In this article, we’ll offer some simple and effective ideas so that you’ll never be lacking in inspiration for content.
Facebook and Twitter posts can come under one of two categories:
- Original ideas
- Content sharing or responding to others’ posts
Find an original idea to share
Having a blog is a great way to share unique content. If you don’t have one, don’t panic – you can always create concise, interesting and entertaining content for your audience on Facebook or Twitter.
Here are some ideas:
- Give advice
What sorts of questions regularly come up in your sector, whether from current or prospective clients, or your employees? Think about these and offer some advice.
For instance, if you run the social media account for a car garage, you could give some useful tips like:
- Reminding people to change their tyres in summer and winter
- Reminding people to renew their motorway coupons
Even if this seems like very simple advice, don’t underestimate it: your fans will appreciate such content as it’s handy and unselfish.
2. Offer a peek behind the scenes of your company
Depending on what you do, it could be very interesting to offer your fans an insight into what goes on within your company.
If we stick with the example of a car garage, you could show your fans the latest cars to arrive in your showroom, in real time:
During the AIR14 demonstration, which took place in August-September 2014, demand for chairs in the event colours was so great that the company had to produce extra stock in just 24 hours. We posted a video offering a behind the scenes look at the production process:
3. Respond to others
Social networks are the place for conversation and interaction. Go on your news feed, read what the influential figures in your sector are posting and then reply to their comments and mention them. Make sure that what you say will be of interest to the whole community.
When someone comments on one of your posts, don’t take 3 days to reply! Answer as soon as you can: your company’s image is at stake.
Share other people’s content
People often ask the same question: should I (re)post content that comes from another page or account? From our experience, the answer is yes.
Unless you have an army of writers like some big media sites do, it’s not always easy to post fresh content every day. (Re)posting content from other sources must therefore become part of your editorial strategy.
Why? Firstly, to recognise the efforts made by your peers. By reposting their content, you’re subtly telling them that you respect their work and that you think your community will find it interesting. It’s a great way of getting yourself and your company noticed, but in an ethical manner.
Retweet on Twitter or share on Facebook
We often advise our clients to create a list of influential people on Twitter whose tweets you like reading and whose content you enjoy sharing. Once you’ve made your list, you’ll have an almost infinite source of interesting content at your disposal, and which you can then share. Share content that you find interesting and which your followers may find useful too.
Don’t forget to mention or tag the person or company who originally produced the content: get yourself noticed in an intelligent and ethical way.
Use RSS feeds
RSS feeds will help you save a lot of time when looking for interesting content.
Use tools like Netvibes and Feedly to aggregate your RSS feeds and take time every day to scan your feeds in order to find interesting content to share.
Native search
Use #hashtags to find content based on keywords. Here’s an example from Twitter using the hashtag #SocialMediaMarketing:
Use a tool like Hootsuite to save your searches on Twitter, or Iconosquare for your searches on Instagram.
4. Share quotes
Quotes from well-known people are likely to provoke interaction.
You can find a huge number of quotes on the internet, but why not go further by creating your own images? We recommend that you use Canva, a great tool for creating visual content for your social media accounts.
Pinterest is also a very good source of quotes:
Include promotional content from time to time
After all, if you’re on social media, it’s because you want to get your products or services known.
It’s therefore normal to post ‘promotional’ content. But, we advise that you do so in moderation: one post a week is enough if you tend to publish one post a day.
Make sure that you never come across as too pushy: share posts linked to your services or products whilst focusing on the advantages your audience can take from them.
Don’t even think about posting things like ‘visit our site now!’ Instead, go for messages like ‘we’ve just applied a new method which has increased traffic to our website by 20% in one week’. You’ll quickly notice a small difference because you’re offering added value to your audience.
