How to Never Run Out of Social Media Content Ideas

If you’re posting an average of 3 times a day, across 4 social media platforms, 5 days a week then you need to be posting at least 60 posts per week. That’s 240 posts a month, and 2880 posts a year…

Can you even think of 2880 social media posts right now?

2880 is a lot of posts however there are methods for generating 1000’s of social media content ideas that you can learn and implement into your social media strategies. These methods do require a bit of logical/analytical thinking, some design skill, and a strong work ethic, but the outcome will be an increase in social media followers and a page that you can be proud of.

Understanding what a Social Media Post is and its Objective

A social media post is a way of putting yourself out there into the online world. In a personal setting, it could be letting your friends know you’re on holiday or that you’re in a relationship. In a business setting, it could be sharing information about products/services or attempting to get more customers.

A social media post is a 1 off piece of content that usually stands on its own and doesn’t require a breakdown or further explanation. While it can be leading to something, such as the release of a film or other content, each social media post stands on its own.

This means that there doesn’t have to be a lot of “depth” to a social media post which can make them easier to mass produce. For example, you could share pictures of trees in a series called “A picture of a tree a day”. This series could purely be for no reason or could be to promote a business somehow, but the bottom line is that the posts themselves are just pictures of trees.

Break Big Ideas Down into Several Smaller Ideas

Given that social media posts don’t have to have depth, it makes it very easy to make several posts out of a big idea. This is apposed to a blog or video because in a blog post there’s got to be explanations and a lot more detail about whatever’s being spoken about. Social Media Posts don’t to have explain anything, they’ve just got to describe.

For example, out of this article I will be able to make about 3/4 graphics that you will see throughout the article, 1 of these being the cover which I have versions of for every social media platform, and another one being about the depth of a social media post. The depth post will simply describe that social media posts stand on their own and don’t need depth. The depth is in this article and anyone who wants to learn more about how to create ideas will have to click through to read but the social media post will be the briefest of descriptions.

You also need to understand your brand and goals when it comes to your social media content. For example, for me I’m trying to attract people to my article so I gave them a small teaser of information (this goes a lot into the straight line method which you can read about here) and then try to attract them to come to the article for more. If your brand was purely on social media then you would need to give all of the information in detail in the post.

Share Links to Other Articles/Websites

A popular way to fill up a days’ worth of social media content is to share some links to articles/content from other websites. This strategy requires some effort to find good material, but the reward is increased trust in your brand and potentially more followers.

You’ll see that strategy being used with sites like The Facts Site which posts lists of facts every day on every topic that you can think of. You could easily take 1 list a day and share it as a post and you’ll have at least 1 post a day for the rest of your life. Sharing these posts around lunchtime will get you the most views and extra followers.

This strategy works because a viewer is going to associate the linked content with your brand, viewing you as a middleman for good information. It doesn’t matter if you wrote the information or not, it’s your brand that’s shown it to the viewer. This psychological connection happens because it’s much easier to get the reward of someone else’s hard work than it is to do the work itself. In this case, the brand has gone out and found this information which saves you from having to it yourself so if you follow them it can be presumed that they’ll find more good information.

However, this strategy does take a lot of time and effort. If you’re sharing articles about a topic that you operate in, lets say overseas travel, then you’ve got to make sure the article isn’t from a competitor or that it sells something. This means you must read every article, look through every website, and be very careful when it comes to choosing articles to share. It also requires you to look through several articles that discuss similar topics which can be quite boring.

Look at What Everyone Else is Doing with their Social Media

There are over 200 million business using Facebook daily for their marketing. Following on from the earlier maths for posts per day, that’s 60 times 200 million posts per day… we don’t need to do the maths to know that that’s a lot of posts.

With every business making so many posts, they’re going to have tried many different approached, topics, and themes. Even in your field alone, if you have 3 direct competitors operating in the same area as you, that’s about 180 posts a week that you can look through and get social media content ideas from.

Here is a list of factors to look for when researching your competitor’s social media content:

• What topics are they talking about (such as are they sharing the social side of their office, sharing news about industry etc)
• What type of content gets the most engagement? Then try to figure out why this content gets engagement (look at the way it’s written, picture or just text etc)
• What hashtags they’re using and then go on to research the hashtag a bit
• Who their followers/engagers are and learn as much about them as possible (with the eventual goal being to attract similar people or steal them)

Create Content Pillars to Guide You

There’s an interesting story of an experiment that was looking at humans when they have and don’t have goals (the story is shared by Simon Sinek, but I can’t find the original experiment anywhere). In the experiment, a man was asked to walk around the room, and he did randomly and aimlessly until a chair was thrown in front of him. The man stopped, looked at the chair, and then looked at the scientists to ask what to do next.

The experiment was repeated but this time the scientists told the man to go to an opposite corner of the room. The man started walking and the chair was thrown in front of him but this time the man simply walked around the chair to continue to the corner. This shows that when you’re focused on a goal you won’t stop for obstacles but will deal with them and achieve the goal.

Content Pillars are pieces of content that fall under a certain category, for example, fun or informative. It’s a way to have a structed social media strategy as well as help you come up with ideas for content. If you’re lost for ideas but know that you’ve got to post something about life experience, then you now have an end goal you can work towards as opposed to having no goal and being truly lost.

To create Content Pillars, think about some of the core values of your brand and figure out 3-5 topics that you can constantly talk about. For example, latest news, around the office, fun facts, and memes, could be Content Pillars which you’ll then use as a reference for all future posts. This way, if you ever become lost for Social Media content ideas, you’ll always have a reference.

In Summary

• You need to create 2880 posts per year
• Break down a big idea into several social media posts
• Social media posts don’t need to have depth, they just need to describe
• Sharing links to good content will grow your following by being a middleman
• Look at what everyone else is doing to get ideas for content
• Use a Content Pillar as a reference for ideas

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