Each week, it is becoming more and more challenging to find interesting and stimulating content for your social media channels.  With the forever changing algorithms, it is important to share content that is both popular and engaging for your audience.  The content is out there if you know where to find it!  

I have lots of sources to find content, but I thought it would be an interesting idea to “ask the audience” and see where others find their articles and ideas of things to post and keep their audience engaged.  Below are eight ideas that some of my team use on a daily basis to find content for our clients.

#1 – Google News

The first tip came from Social Mediator, Mandy Moser.  Mandy’s daily routine includes looking at Google News, making sure that she is using the handy filters.   She explains the process in these quick easy steps.

Step 1 – Add your search term to Google

Step 2 – Click on “tools”

Step 3 – Filter from “All news” to “blogs” – swap these around.  Mandy also clicks “The web” and filters for the UK only for some of her clients

Step 4 – Click “recent” and then change to “past 24 hours”

This process tends to work better than your inbox being flooded with irrelevant google alerts. 

#2 – Days of the Year & On This Day

Lynn Scott (Social Mediator at Green Umbrella) has a number of clients who need engaging content that’s “a bit fluffy” or “not very serious” for Facebook and Twitter.  She shared with us two sources where she finds interesting content.

Days of the Year is rather “Americanised”, but there is always something that will give you an idea for content for Facebook or Twitter.  For example, Wednesday 7th June is “National VCR Day“.  I may not use this on a Facebook account, but I will consider this as an idea for a future Throwback Thursday for a client on an Instagram account.

“On This Day” is a site that I use for my more serious clients.  There are some interesting historical facts that I can use for Twitter and sometimes they also work well on LinkedIn.

Click here to visit “Days of the Year”

Click here to visit On This Day.

#3 – Twitter Moments

Sarah Marsh Collings, Social Mediator for Green Umbrella finds that using Twitter Moments is a fabulous source for sharing content.   Sarah Tweets something from Twitter moments, or Twitter trending area each day.  Filtering on “Fun” if it is for one of my easier going clients, or “News” for my more serious clients.   Sarah also mentions that she will often spot a story on Twitter Moments, click on the link to read the full article, and then if it is relevant she will share on LinkedIn or Facebook.

#4 – LinkedIn Trending Content

Christina Robinson, Digital Overlord at GUHQ has been mentioning to her coaching clients the new “trending content” features on LinkedIn.  Although the content can sometimes be rather “American”, there are always a few golden gems here that work well when shared on LinkedIn.   Unfortunately, you can only find the trending content on the LinkedIn app and not on the desktop version (June 2017).   LinkedIn Pulse app was also fantastic, however, this was removed from the app store on 31st May 2017.

#5 –  Industry Gurus and Your Competitors

Roz Tidman (Social Mediator at GU) explained how she uses Twitter lists to find good content to share. Roz has multiple lists on Twitter that she uses daily to source content for her clients.  The first one is a private list which is set up for her client’s competitors.  Competitors often tweet some fabulous article links.   The second list that I check daily is my “industry gurus”.  If I want to push out the most up to date information for my clients, then this is an extremely handy source of content for me.

Below is a quick video to show you how to use Twitter lists.

#6 – PostPlanner (Ideas Engine)

If time is against you, then perhaps consider an ideas engine platform called PostPlanner.  Here you will see a collection of articles, quotes, questions to ask, fill in the blank ideas, and so much more.    Check out the video below to show you the PostPlanner features.

#7 – Trade Magazines

Jane Pollard, who works at GUHQ mentioned that trade magazines (both online and offline) are often a fabulous source for content ideas for her clients.  Jane uses a Google Chrome extension called “One Tab”.  I love “one tab”.  With the click of a button, I can bring all the websites into my browser for a particular client.  For example, one of the clients that I manage is a caravan sales company.  I click my “one tab” and it will instantly load all the trade magazine websites into my browser.  I prefer to keep my email inbox as clear as possible, so this process works well for me.

Click here to download the One Tab Chrome Extension.

#8 – Flipboard

Joanne James (a client in our coaching club from The Crafty Owl) reported that she uses the app called Flipboard as a source of content ideas for her craft business.  Joanne mentioned that you can use Flipboard to create your own ‘magazines’ around specific areas of interest, but she generally uses it to find content for other channels rather than share within Flipboard itself.

Click here to download the app.

Summary

I hope that you find some of these ideas inspirational.  Where do you source your content ideas from?  DO you have RSS feeds set up?  Perhaps you use the Hootsuite content creator platform?  We would love to hear from you in the comment section below.

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