You need a steady stream of Facebook posts to take your best shot at getting into your follower’s Facebook feeds.
And while the most likely to be Liked Facebook posts are sale announcements and fun photos of staff or customers (see our 5 Types of Likable, Shareable and All-around Engaging Facebook Post Ideas), the daily diet of Facebook posting are the news items, trivia, useful tips, surprising facts and other bits of information you find online and share on Facebook.
Set up an assembly line to pull in these post-able bits from the web so social media work doesn’t cut into time better spent running your business. Try these techniques:
Do This Now
Google Alerts
Always the go-to app for following news and trends online, you can create an alert that will send you email messages with links on any topic. Enter your competitors’ names, your search keywords, brand names. Just keep the terms specific so you only get the good stuff. Here’s the Google Alerts home page.
A different audience than Facebook, true, but Twitter is just way more active than Facebook for trending topics (displayed on the left of Twitter pages) and hashtags (use the search box to look for the ones that didn’t rise to trending level) that show you what’s on people’s minds today.
Social Media Monitors
These free, online services scan social media for you and pull in posts from all over, a window on how businesses in your industry use social.
- Tagboard. Enter any term and this tool combs Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and displays the results on an easy to scan grid.
- Hashtagify. Enter a keyword and it shows you related Twitter hashtags and recent tweets.
If you’re running paid software services like Hootsuite to schedule your posts, you also get as part of the deal a robust monitor.
Email Newsletters
You surely have a lineup of sites you check to stay up to date with your industry – well, save yourself the time of checking them and subscribe to their weekly newsletter that brings you their best stuff.
Today in History, Amazing Facts and Other Trivia
From the serious (History.com) to the semi-serious (Mental Floss), take your pick, and sign up for their newsletters or follow them on social media. Also, try Brainy Quote for wise sayings, though, as Socrates said, “the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
Do This Over Time
Your Business Page Facebook Feed
Follow enough interesting people in your line of business on Facebook and your own Facebook feed becomes a rich source of content to share with your followers. A good starting point would be influential people in your line of business – and check their FB pages to see who they follow.
The Facebook audience loves to share images, both photos and graphics, such as a quote of the day, and Pinterest is a rich source of images for most any business. Search the site for your keywords and, as you find people, “boards” and topics to follow, you’ll develop a feed of post-able content delivered to your Pinterest home page.
Still looking for post ideas? Our Thryv Facebook Page features advice on marketing for local businesses. And our Enlighten Me site is a trove of link-able articles on a huge rank of topics. If you need comprehensive help managing your Facebook and other social pages, check out our social media management services for local businesses.
