Content is Still King, but Social Media is the Gasoline: 23 content ideas for you

There are so many Social Media platforms available to businesses that it can make your head spin. However, it does not matter if you are posting in just Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or 30 other channels, if your content is weak and stale, you will not be doing your business any favors. In fact you may be creating some harm. One point on a marketing plan. Your use of the Social Media platforms should be integrated with your other marketing. It is important to create one master brand image, both online and offline that support each other. Jay Baer makes a great point about the need to Market your Marketing.

Every posting for your business should follow a strategy or calendar. The quantity of posts will vary greatly based on your marketing plan, goals, amount of resources available to create or find the content, and the Social Media platforms that you choose to use. Each one of these influencers can be a blog post in itself. Today, we are looking at the content.

Content can usually fall into 4 categories: About your business (Marketing); About your industry (Informative); Information for your customers (Educational); and Fun-whimsical-misc (Personality of your business). It is also important that you balance the number of posts per category. For example, your marketing posts should be about 10{a693e3da8ed473a832134816c07ef76fbff43db3efb90ebffcf0f1dc571402e9} of your total posts. People do not want to be sold to all the time. Any post that you publish should fit into at least one category. Some posts can fit into more than one.

About your business (Marketing)

Testimonials from you happy customers
Employee profiles
Contests or promotions
Coupons or Specials
Upcoming business events
Awards, or links to independent write ups of your product or company

About your industry (Informative)

Links to other blog posts from professionals in your industry
Suggested resources, such as books or technology
Frequently Asked Questions

Information for your customers (Educational)

Tips for running their business
How-to articles or videos
Reminders about training sessions or deadlines
Links to specific resources for THEIR business
Ask for questions for you to respond to with answers or suggestions
Checklists

Fun-whimsical-misc (Personality of your business)

National blank week or day (July 23^rd is National Hot Dog Day & also Vanilla Ice Cream day)
Quote of the week
Opinion – No politics or religion
Holiday reminders
Community events
Pictures
Humor or jokes
Gift ideas

And a final thought. You must include a Call to Action (CTA) as often as possible. The Call to Action can be used in almost every post. Tell the reader to Like & Share the post. Invite the reader to post their thought or opinion. Just asking a question is not enough. You need to demand an answer. And keep in mind, you will want to customize your CTA to the Social Media platform. Asking your reader to “Please Retweet” does not work well on Facebook.

So . . . My Call to Action for you is to Sign up for my newsletter for Social Media Tips, Tricks & More. AND . . . Please LIKE & SHARE this blog using the links below.

Tom Brown
Social Media Marketing Specialist
Media Barker