Social media!
It’s the great leveler in business and gives the small guys the opportunity to play on-par with the big guys! The problem is, most people have no idea WHAT kind of content to post!
And I get it! There have been many times I’ve sat down with great intentions to post, and as soon as I click on that little box, every thought of what to write about flees my head!
That’s why I had my team start creating and using a social media calendar each week. We outline what we’ll talk about, what the theme is, how many graphics we want to create, etc. It makes it easy to keep good content flowing all week long!
It’s all too easy to grab other people’s blogs and content and just repost to your page, but un-original content just doesn’t get you the same engagement and brand recognition! So let’s break down some easy ways to find good content to post!
I will admit, I’ve not always been the best about ensuring I get tons of content out on Social Media. But while attending the 10X Growth Con in February, Grant Cardone got on stage and was talking about everything he did to pull the event off. Amazingly enough, they had somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 entrepreneurs collected for a conference on Superbowl Weekend, so of course I wanted to know how he filled that room!
And he listed it out. Over the past 357 days he did:
- 721 Live Streams
- 1500 Videos
- 150,000 Inbound sales calls
- 937,000 Outbound sales calls
- 167,000,000,000 Emails!
And people responded! And it inspired me to increase my social activity as well, and I’m hoping it does the same for you!
First tip:
Check out what other people in your arena are posting! You want your content to be fresh and relevant, right? So my favorite trick is to go check out what other people are talking about. I don’t have to talk about the exact same thing, but it often triggers me to talk about something with my own perspective.
I like to follow people who put out a plethora of variations on content: videos, long posts, graphics, pictures, short posts, live streams, etc!
I recently saw a video from a friend where she’s simply walking people through some of the “behind the scenes” information that she uses every day to run her roofing business, and it was short, cleverly pieced together, and interesting! It was a great reminder that, while I know the ins-and-outs of my business every day, my followers don’t always, and that is often far more interesting than we’re aware of!
But sometimes…
Stalking other profiles fails to give me inspiration! So I’ve also learned to keep a notebook with me and jot down random ideas as they cross my mind during the day. Sitting in a waiting room and watching a family play games together to pass the time may trigger an idea for a blog post, so I’ll jot that down. The other day a friend send me an article on Friend Power that I thought was incredibly well put together and I jotted down some ideas for an article I could write that would elaborate on the concept!
This way I always have a long list of topics to focus on!
The biggest key to great social media content:
Planning!
I take twenty or thirty minutes once a week to plan content to ensure we’re shaking things up between the long posts, conversation-starter questions, videos, short posts, graphics, etc, but on top of that, I have put safeguards in place to ensure that when I have those thoughts of “Wow! This would make a great Social Media post!” I have a way to capture that lightning in a bottle!
And one last reminder:
Social Media is about the Social side! When you throw content out there, make sure you are going back and checking in on the content. When others ask questions or comment, engage back! Start a conversation. All of the social algorithms are built around engagement, so make sure you’re providing that to your followers!
To sum up:
Keep a notebook handy for when you see something that might make some good social media content.
Watch people who are successful on social media for your inspiration.
Plan your posts out!
I know social media is intimidating, but it shouldn’t be. Social media should be fun and enjoyable, so I hope these tips can help you to make it that way.
If LinkedIn is your major social media platform and you’re struggling to make it work for you, I’d strongly encourage you to check out the free LinkedIn challenge we’ve got going that will help you to boost your LinkedIn presence and take advantage of one of the best business to business platforms in the history of the internet. Check it out here!
Stephanie Scheller is a TED speaker, a two-time best-selling author and the founder of Grow Disrupt: a San Antonio based company dedicated to disrupting the way the world does business through training. In just under a decade, Stephanie has been behind the scenes with nearly 2500 small businesses. She has worked in groups and one-on-one to create total business transformation & help business owners live the life they got into business to create!