Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning marketing podcast, I'm Esther.
And I'm Melanie.
And today we're talking about content ideas. What exactly should we be posting on social media?
It's really, really hard sometimes to force yourself to put up something that's going to move your audience along, keep them interested and frankly keep you interested as well.
Definitely. But there are so many things that you can post. Not all of them will be relevant to your business. So just pick and choose a few that are. But you don't have to stick to the same things every single time that you're posting
No... There is one thing that we should stress, though, is if you have a website, you should at least put one link a week, absolute minimum, one link a week that takes you takes your audience back to your website.
Definitely. You should always be driving traffic to your website. If you have an email marketing list, you can also be posting occasionally about driving people to your list to sign up.
Yeah, and the more that you can get people to view what's useful to them, the greater chance they have of coming back without any pressurisation. But one thing I find quite frustrating is that people spend hours, you know, making the best blog post or creating some really beautiful images to put up on their website. And then they only share it once, which is such a real shame.
It really is. Your blog post can be evergreen content, which means that you can share it multiple times over the same year over the next year. If things haven't really changed since you've written it, then you know, it could be a good few years of content in that one post that you have written.
Or you could go back to some of your old posts and update it a little. As long as you don't change the URL or the address of the post itself, you can update the images, change some of the language. So it's still relevant.
Definitely, and having it relevant for the time of year and the people that you're talking to is essential, ok? You want something that people can relate to. For example, if you're posting about going back to school in April, that's not really going to work with any audience. But if you're posting about going back to school, end of August, start of September, then that's even in January, then that's always going to work really well. But what is your opinion, Melanie, on the sort of comic days or the days like, you know, National Watermelon Day, National, Take Your Pet to Work Day? You know, all these things, are they useful?
Well, they can be I mean, I think some people worry too much about their own business persona being very serious all the time, and I don't think you need to be, I think sometimes is interesting and topical to put up content that kind of relieves your audience a little of your business, if you like. But it's still coming from your platform.
Yeah, yeah. But don't steal anybody else's pet to take them to work with you. Only take your own pet to work through if you're going to be doing that one.
So that's the particular website that we get those type of days from is called Days of the Year. So if you're looking for some weird and wonderful holidays and days of celebration and some sensible ones as well, it's daysoftheyear.com.
Yeah, it's really useful. And another useful tip is to talk to your audience. Don't talk at them, OK? Involve them, ask questions, be open to them responding to those questions. OK, it's essential. You know, your storytelling. Social media is all the way telling stories and being social.
It could also do like one sheet download, PDF that you can put up on your website or on your social channels that are really, really useful, that solve a pain point for your customer or maybe create a prerecorded how-to video.
Yes, how-to testimonials are great and they can then be stored on YouTube channel and that can be another aspect of your social media that is covered. Another good idea is to share content from other people. OK, don't just have your own content on your social media platforms, whether that be a retweet on Twitter, whether it be a shared across from your from articles on LinkedIn, whatever way you can share it, then giving the person credit as to who wrote it, who's what business it comes from, can also add credibility to yourself.
Weirdly enough, that completely accurate, excuse me, you can also try and collaborate with others.
Yeah, definitely, collaboration is a great way, and we talked about this at a recent summit that we were involved with how we got together and collaborated on how collaboration can help build your business and move it forward if you would like to see that video. It's been archived, too bad. But have you ever been involved in the press? Has there been any good press written about public good? Preferably, preferably. But have you had a PR release? Have you had somebody write about you or include you in an article? In the newspaper, in a magazine, something like that. Share that. Even if it was a few weeks ago, months ago, you know, a throwback Thursday. Yeah, but even a throwback Thursday to remember when this happened. You know, those are all good, too.
Or get on a podcast.
Yes. Is that is that a hint for people to contact us and become guests if they want to?
I mean, we do like talking to each other, but let's face it, it does get a bit boring after a while. It does. It does.
But but there are so many....
Get on a podcast, get on the radio and, you know, go on as a guest spots on somebody else's Facebook lives.
Yes. Or go live yourself. Hmm. Go live yourself. Do stories, Instagram stories, Facebook stories, whether they be you talking or just posting other information. Do stories.
And whatever you create, repurpose it, repurpose everything, if you're writing a blog, then do a Facebook, live about it, then do a podcast about it, then do a YouTube video about it.
Then break it down into images, infographics, even break it down into a Q&A, if you can, or a quick five-point how to. But how could you repurpose a testimonial?
Well, you could if it's a video testimony, you can print it out and put it up as an image on your website and on your social channels.
OK, cool, could you make a blog post out of a testimonial?
And if it was a really long one, if you could make it a case study, couldn't you?
Well, yeah, yeah, that's the way, yep. And ensured the case studies, if you have. I lost my train of thought there. Yes. If you have a new product or service coming out, maybe a work in progress, maybe coming soon, maybe, you know, by this hot off the press, those sorts of publications are also very, very useful
Or encourage pre-sales, get a pre-sales discount if you buy now or wait until near the time and pay more.
Yes. Also, it's a good idea to share any wins or successes that you have had, but also share some losses and failures so that people know that you are human just like them.
More to the point, make sure it's a lesson learned rather than oh crap, I've done something wrong.
Definitely. Definitely. And ask advice and opinions from others because I'm sure everybody would love to help. And first of all, know how they'd love to know how you got your success and your win. But they would also love to know how you overcame your failure. And that's a good lesson to share with people.
Explain the sales and after sales process that your business offers, whether it's service or products, because that gives some people some idea of what happens after they've purchased from you.
Yeah, and then you can also share about any awards that you have won anything that you have got. Information from other people that you have collaborated with them and they have won, ended up winning a prize, it's your prize as well.
Yeah, it could be a client of yours, perhaps. Maybe they, you know, you've been supporting them. They've won something. So it's kind of an accolade to you.
Yeah. Share their success as well. I mean, promote them as well. And if you partnered at all with any charities or if you do any charitable work, then that's a good way of promoting the charity as well as your philanthropic side.
That's a very good point. Actually, do monthly roundups. You know, I do a monthly roundup and almost all of the content I deliver in that roundup is other people's obviously interspersed with some of mine. And because it's useful and the more useful you are, the greater chance you have of people coming back to you.
Yeah, yeah. And it's like on previous podcasts that we have shared our top apps and places that we go to get information, software that we use. Sharing that as well with your own clients and with your own audience is a good way to get seen and get your brand out there as well. Let's go. OK, well, if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.
Absolutely.
And you don't have to be affiliated with any of them.
Oh, no, no, no. You don't have to be affiliated. Or I mean, if they'd like to sponsor you. Go, go, go. But, you know, it's. It's sharing, is caring. Ultimately,
It really is, I'm against negativity on social media. Yes, there are times that you just really want to lash out and say X, Y and Z did something wrong to me, but do that privately, praise publicly and shamed privately, I will not shame, but you know what I mean.
But as you can hear, we've spent the last ten minutes giving you ideas of different ways to add content to your website to your social media platforms to create blogs. It really is huge, but we do appreciate that it can be quite time-consuming. Some of the things that we're suggesting here do cost, whether it be cost elements of some description. So you don't have to do all of them all at once. But I hope you found it useful. Write down what you can replay and write down. And hopefully if you find any of this useful, do tag us on any of your social media and let us know how you get in.
Yes. And we'll be back next week talking about how to put all these things together in a social media plan content plan. We'll talk to you then, guys. Have a good week. Bye-bye.
Bye.