Are you one of those people who would like to be more active on social media, but are afraid they’ll run out of things to write about? These idea generators will help you find topics not only for social media, but also your blog posts, newsletter articles, and any other content you need to generate.
Ideas for content are everywhere. Here’s a month’s worth.
- Does your organization participate in or host events? Even if you’re just attending an event, talking about it on social media helps the event and helps your audience get to know what is important to you. It just might be important to them, too.
- Posts and questions from readers. Some of my most popular articles and posts have been written in response to a question from an individual. You might want to invite people to message you privately if they’d like to ask questions anonymously. You could give a general generic answer publicly. (open invitation – let me know what you’d like to see addressed in a future blog)
- Repurpose newsletter articles and white-papers into posts.
- Monitor industry blogs and resources for material to share. I suggest adding your own perspective, or at least a comment on your post when you share it. This makes it more personal and relevant to your followers. Bonus – this helps put all those emails that come into your mailbox to good use.
- Work from a variety of sources. If you pull all your posts from one or two blogs, people might as well subscribe to them directly.
- Ask open-ended questions to prompt discussion.
- Case studies are a great way to let the world know what kind of work you do.
- Promoting clients. I like to share my clients’ events and successes.
- Surveys on topics relevant to your audience. Bonus – this can help you understand your audience’s interests for future posts.
- A little bit of promotional material but please don’t be too salesy. It’s acceptable to do an occasional self-promotional post, but I’d make sure those are strongly outweighed by informative or entertaining posts.
- Proposal text – sometimes material written for a specific client opportunity might have a more general interest and could be turned into a post. This post was inspired by a social media management proposal I prepared this week!
- Images – photos or drawings of your work, your office space, and especially your people are very popular, and rank more highly than straight text.
- Videos – Video has been getting a lot of attention lately because it gets fantastic results. If you can explain or demonstrate something on video you might get a lot more engagement than if you do the same thing with text. Facebook has shared some best practices on using Facebook Live here. Twitter just announced that they will increase the length of videos they allow to 140 seconds.
- Individual inquiries. Recently a client asked me for some tips to make better photos with her cellphone camera. I realized that a lot of people might have that question, so I turned it into an article, which happened to have the most clicks of any article so far.
- Answers to FAQs from your website, one at a time.
- Quotes – especially together with an image.
- Helpful resources about your field or on topics closely related and of interest to your readers.
- Book review or recommendations.
- Holiday and seasonal tie-ins.
- Breaking news in your industry or related industry.
- Hints, tips and how-tos.
- Regular weekly posts – such as #TBT (Throwback Thursday) or one of your creation, like #WeirdWednesday.
- Employment and volunteer opportunities with your organization, your clients, or in your industry.
- Reviews and testimonials, with permission of the customer who wrote them, of course.
- Pay attention to trending topics; is there a natural tie-in you can take advantage of? Using trending hashtags can help get your posts noticed.
- Numbered lists. Humans are funny. We click on titles that begin with numbers more frequently than titles that are all words.
- Jokes – funny and non-offensive, please.
- Suggestions from followers. I always give credit where due.
- Employees – feature a new or senior employee. Tell about their work, and also some interesting things about their personal life. This will help position your organization as more human and personal, and it will also help get the rest of your organization involved in your social media.
- Tie-ins to events in the broader culture. For example, while I’m writing this, I’m listening to #GarrisonKeillor’s final broadcast of Prairie Home Companion. That could inspire a post about what I learned about story-telling from Garrison Keillor. If you write that post, please share it with me – I’d love to read it!
I hope these 30 suggestions will get your creative juices flowing and help you fill your social media pipeline with a variety of posts that are interesting to your audience. Good luck and happy posting!
Owner, designer, marketer at Kim Schlossberg Designs
Kim Schlossberg created Kim Schlossberg Designs to help businesses and non-profits refine their messages and get them out to the right audience, in a clear, consistent, and integrated way. She provides strategic planning, execution and coordination of marketing, branding, and design by developing a deep understanding of clients’ businesses and their goals, and serves as a trusted advisor to help them grow their businesses and brand. Kim speaks to business and non-profit groups about marketing and related topics, and publishes a well-received (but slightly irregular) newsletter.
Latest posts by Kim Schlossberg (see all)
- How 2020 can make 2021 better - December 28, 2020
- Welcome to the Kim Schlossberg Designs newsletter - December 18, 2020
- A Strong Brand is the Key to Resilience - April 10, 2020
