Not sure what to post on social media? Wondering if you should share something on social media? What if the reaction isn’t what you expected? Afraid you will offend all your followers with a post? Many business owners wonder what they can share and post on social media. What is appropriate? What is helpful? Is it OK to post a fun picture or share a post from a friend?
Here’s a few questions to ask yourself: What do I hope to accomplish by posting this? Is it beneficial to my customers? If so, how/why?
Remember when posting as a business, you need to have a specific goal in mind and a plan developed for posting to social media. Your social media plan should include call-to-actions, helpful tidbits, and social engagement as well as plenty of visual content whether it is photos, images, or videos. This plan can be very detailed as to exactly what you will post, when you will post it and to which social media platform or you can take a more laid back approach and plan to share certain types of content throughout the month and just make sure it happens. There is no scientific method as to what works best other than to post consistently and make sure the content is useful or engaging to your audience. The key factor is to be social! Create engagement. Give opportunities to help or share ideas.
Don’t be afraid of offending, because chances are you probably will at some point. Use it as an opportunity to learn from your guests and maybe share some other ideas that might be more positive. When handling a confrontation, handle it gently and with care and you might win them over simply by showing some kindness and concern. It’s ok for you to not always be the expert or know everything. Sometimes people will engage when you don’t! Use it to your advantage to say, “Thanks, I learned something today, so glad I have such great customers that care so much about me and my business!”
Your content marketing plan is a strategy to engage people and bring leads to your business. There are a couple of different thoughts as far as how to divide and conquer content. You can be as specific and detailed as makes sense for your business, but you need to make sure to divide your social media posts into what it will accomplish. By dividing your content to have specific goals, you will be able to measure if it is working and adjust your plan accordingly.
Here is a couple of ways to divide social media content. For instance, drive traffic to your blog, sign up for email list, create leads, engage customers can be divided into specific shares like 25% of content will drive to the blog, 50% will create leads, 10% will engage customers and 15% will go to the blog. Another thought is to use a method to divide into thirds where 1/3 promotes your business and drives traffic for profitability, 1/3 is to share ideas and stories from business leaders in your industry and 1/3 will provide the personal touch with your followers. Whatever plan you use to divide and conquer, it needs to work for you and your customers.
Here’s a list of ideas that might be helpful.
- Take a picture of your work space.
- Ask relevant questions
- Introduce a new employee or feature an employee
- Share something from your news feed that is popular or from another source that might be helpful
- Interview a customer – this might be a good Facebook live event – if you know the customer will be positive!
- Post a fill-in-the-blank and ask for engagement
- Share a community event you are going to
- Share something funny
- Share your story – without too many details.
- Post a throwback Thursday or Tuesday photo where you share some old time photos from your area
- Recognize holidays and important dates
- Share an inspirational or motivational quote
- Feature a customer of the month
- Share something about a recent event you attended.
- Share an attention- grabbing statistic
- Ask a multiple choice question and ask for feedback
- Create a video or Live event featuring people or products from your business
- Repeat something that worked well in the past
- Look to popular daily hashtags or news items for ideas
- Share a newsletter or announcement
- Run a contest
- Link to an infographic or meme
- Share images of interest
- Correct a common misconception that is business related
- Share a favorite book
- Share content from another local business or organization and ask them to do the same
- Share helpful tips
- Post a milestone or a little known fact about the company
- Cross promote social media posts
- Ask people to join mailing list
- Thank customers for loyalty and support
- Share excerpt of your blog post