Continuing Part 2 (Part 1, Part 3, Part 4) of this series, let’s dive into what you should post on these mostly text-based platforms and how they differ from Instagram and Pinterest.
In my experience, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are the hardest for me to work with because I am more of a visual person. And while it’s true that pics and videos are heavily featured on these three social media platforms, I would say that they’re more about copy than images.
So how can you find good content for your business without constantly posting salesy stuff? Let’s work it out.
Content Ideas for Facebook
For product-based businesses, a lot of the same rules from Instagram apply here (which is no surprise since they’re the same company!):
- behind-the-scenes
- product launches
- sneak peeks of new collections
- team member bios
- job posts
- press mentions, shout outs
- things that inspire you.
For service-based businesses, you can use a lot of the different ideas from product-based businesses, but you have a little more wiggle room to utilize content from apps or paid tools that compliment your services. So if you’re a fitness coach, it would be great to:
- post content that relates to home gym equipment
- reviews of stretch bands
- sales or deals for gym memberships you’ve come across
- healthy recipes.
For bloggers, you have the widest berth when it comes to finding content for your fans on Facebook. Like I mentioned in the last post dealing with Pinterest, your goal is to share complimentary content with your blog posts. If you’ve written a post about remodeling your kitchen, then you can link to products you want to recognize as being game-changers to that remodel. You can also share content that inspired your remodel ideas, products like printables that help plan a home project, and X things you’ve learned as a special Facebook fans-only post that links back to the original post.
Content Ideas for Twitter
For product-based businesses, I would recommend using Twitter sparingly unless that’s where your customers are. The character limit of Twitter can make it difficult to truly engage fans. So I would consider using it as a supplement to your company blog. Pull out snippets and use them as text-based tweets or even shareable images (you can use something like Canva or Photoshop to do this).
For service-based businesses, you have a little more leeway as the majority of your business is most likely online so share content that:
- includes news about your niche
- blog posts that have complementary content to your niche
- quotes from industry leaders about why what you do is critical.
For bloggers, you can use a hybrid of both methods especially since you create copy on a regular basis. Pull out good, shareable snippets from your posts and share them as text or as images. In addition to news about your latest posts, you can also retweet content from industry leaders you admire, sale updates on products you’ve used for particular blog posts, and similar content that will help your readers complete a project like yours.
Content Ideas for LinkedIn
For product-based businesses, your goal is to set yourself and your business up as leaders of your niche, so you’re going to want to publish content that is highly targeted to potential customers but still offers value. LinkedIn can be used for selling but is more about creating value and keeping your business top-of-mind so publish content that is very specific to the type of customer you want to reach:
- Articles about industry updates
- thought pieces that show your niche in a positive light
- custom content you’ve created on your company blog (can be incredibly helpful towards attracting new customers)
For service-based businesses, you can do the same as a product-based entrepreneur but you may have a wider array of content to help promote the idea that you are a source of valuable information to your potential and current clients. Push live content that includes updates in your industry, as well as updates about tools or apps that are complementary to your business and write a short explanation blurb as to why it matters. In addition, sharing content that has inspired you to do the work you do can make clients feel like they have personal insight into you and your brand and may make them feel more aligned with you over your competitors.
For bloggers, I don’t really recommend LinkedIn unless your blog specifically targets professionals and/or job hunters or B2B-based content. If your readers are there, though, LinkedIn can be a great way to expand your platform so utilize like-minded content to your blog posts and include industry insiders or tastemakers who publish new content to help align your brand with these thought leaders (when it comes to your followers).
For all three of these platforms, I use three apps to help me find content and push it consistently: MissingLettr, SocialBee, and Quuu.
MissingLettr is cool because it takes my blog posts automatically and creates a year’s worth of social media content that includes quotes from the article and images from the post. It’s also a good upsell for bloggers who are working with brands as it guarantees 12 months of rotation in your social media feed.
SocialBee is a scheduling tool that’s similar to Hootsuite and Buffer but works natively with Quuu.
Quuu is, to me at least, a brilliant business idea: they offer curated content suggestions based on niches you select, and they find this content by offering an avenue for content creators to submit their blog posts to be pushed on the platform. And it is definitely curated. I’ve had one or two early blog posts not make the cut so I know they’re checking the quality to make sure the content they select is worth the push.
