Congratulations. You’ve got your blog posts up and running and your promotional posts all set, but then you realize it’s all about you – and you haven’t begun to share anything else on your social media platforms. Hold on a minute . . . to state the obvious, social media is about being social and engaging with others while sharing valuable information that is relevant, timely, informative and ideally even entertaining.
Balancing your social media posts with a healthy dose of third party (other people’s) content is a terrific strategy to keep your social media consistent and robust as well as establishing you as a reliable source for interesting and engaging content that resonates with your ideal audience.Instead of spending hours scouring the Internet, here are five easy (and FREE!) go-to sources for finding great content:
Your Facebook News Feed – Ideally, you have “liked” other Facebook pages that are relevant to your business or industry. They could be news sources, associations, blogs, partners or other like-minded parties in your space. Regardless, a regular run-through your Facebook Page’s News Feed, where you find the top or most recent posts from these sources is sure to garner many ideas, articles and posts for you to share (using Facebook as your business page, you can find the business page News Feed when you click on “Home” in the upper right hand corner of the Facebook page).
Twitter Lists – Using Twitter lists is an easy way to filter Twitter feeds into manageable streams of related content from a select group of Twitter accounts. For example, I have a created a “SMPeeps” list of people who post regularly and often about social media. Going directly to that list enables me to dive right into a treasure trove of current, trending and popular posts that I can easily retweet and share (you can also simply search on keywords (ex. #socialmedia) for a quick filter on a particular subject but the caveat is that you may not have as reliable sources as you would if you had selected them for a Twitter list).
Feedly – Whether you are sharing other people’s content or you simply want to get caught up on all of your favorite blogs and websites, Feedly is awesome at bringing it all together in one place for your easy review. You can set up Feedly by logging in with one of your social media accounts, then start adding your favorite blogs and article sources to your Feedly account. You can also slice and dice the feeds by subject matter, if you find that you have added varied and unrelated sources.
StumbleUpon – Though it’s been around for a while, I’m relatively new to StumbleUpon. I find it helps to discover recent and relevant content that others have already established as popular or engaging, so you already know that this will probably be popular with your audience. Like the others, StumbleUpon relies on you to select interests to help you find content on a particular subject.
Industry Newsletters – Let others do the work for you. If you subscribe to any sort of industry or insider email newsletter, chances are that they are also sharing “other people’s content” with the focus on keeping you up-to-date with what’s new and hot. One of my favorites is
Mari Smith’s “Social Scoop.” Every Friday she shares what she considers the best of the best in the social media space. What email do you most value and what can you share from it?
Also, if you are using a third party social media applications like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Rallyverse (sadly, Buffer shut down their “Suggestions” tool this month), most of them use algorithms that review your accounts, posts, keywords, trending news (among other things) to find and recommend content customized for you. It’s not necessarily 100% accurate, but it’s a good place to start to sometimes discover something you might otherwise have missed
With the exception of newsletters, each of these options requires a small amount of time to set up with the right sources or searches, but once you do, you’ll see how they can become your one stop resource for staying up to date and finding the right content to share.
Lastly, a few ninja notes about sharing others’ content:
- Share your perspective or point of view about why you are sharing the content – don’t just throw something up for the sake of posting. It’s a missed opportunity to use your voice and differentiate yourself or your business.
- Don’t share an article or post unless you have read it – many times you may find great sounding titles of posts or articles that have nothing to do with the actual content of the piece.
- Always give credit and/or tag the source of the content you are sharing. It often can become a great way to get know peers and influencers in your industry.
- Thank others when they share your content – what comes around goes around!
Do you have a favorite source for finding content? Please share in the comments below. Interested in learning more about online marketing? Sign up for my newsletter, or connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. Thanks!