Social media is an excellent platform for generating content ideas for your blog, website, or social media pages. With billions of users on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, you have access to a massive audience that can provide you with valuable insights and inspiration for your content. In this blog, we will discuss how to use social media to generate content ideas.
Monitor social media conversations
- Social media conversations are an excellent source of content ideas. Monitoring social media conversations can help you identify the topics that people are talking about and the questions they have. You can use social listening tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Mention to monitor social media conversations around your industry, niche, or brand. These tools allow you to track specific keywords, hashtags, or mentions, giving you access to real-time insights and feedback from your audience.
Follow industry influencers and thought leaders
- Following industry influencers and thought leaders on social media can help you stay up-to-date with the latest trends, news, and developments in your industry. You can learn from their insights and opinions and use them to generate content ideas. Look for thought leaders who are relevant to your niche or industry and follow them on social media. You can use tools like Buzzsumo or Followerwonk to identify and follow influencers and thought leaders in your industry.
Use social media polls and surveys
- Social media polls and surveys are a great way to get feedback from your audience and generate content ideas. You can use tools like Twitter Polls, Instagram Polls, or Facebook Polls to create polls and surveys that ask your audience about their opinions, preferences, or pain points. The insights and data you collect from these polls can help you identify the topics that your audience is interested in and create content that meets their needs.
Repurpose social media content
- Repurposing social media content is an excellent way to generate new content ideas. Look for popular posts or tweets on your social media pages and repurpose them into blog posts, videos, or infographics. You can also repurpose user-generated content (UGC) from your social media pages into blog posts or case studies. Repurposing social media content not only saves you time and effort, but it also allows you to create content that resonates with your audience.
Analyze social media metrics
- Analyzing social media metrics can help you identify the topics and types of content that perform well on your social media pages. You can use social media analytics tools like Sprout Social or Hootsuite Analytics to track the engagement, reach, and impressions of your social media posts. Look for patterns and trends in your social media metrics and use them to generate content ideas. For example, if you notice that your videos get more engagement than your blog posts, you can focus on creating more video content.
Join social media groups and communities
- Joining social media groups and communities that are relevant to your niche or industry can help you generate content ideas. Look for groups or communities on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Reddit that are related to your niche or industry and join them. Engage with the members of these groups, ask questions, and participate in discussions. You can use the insights and feedback you get from these groups to generate content ideas that are relevant to your audience.
In conclusion, social media is a valuable tool for generating content ideas. By monitoring social media conversations, following industry influencers, using social media polls and surveys, repurposing social media content, analyzing social media metrics, and joining social media groups, you can generate content ideas that resonate with your audience and help you achieve your marketing goals
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
1. According to you, what is the impact of social media on marketing?
Social media is one of the areas where huge investments are happening today. Since social media is highly customisable for desired media ads and effective campaigns, it has become quite important for businesses. Many companies are trying to reach out to target potential customers beyond borders and trying to convert them into actual customers. Facebook advertisements, for instance, help us to target users by classifying them into categories like industry, education background, purchase history, geographic location, and history of social media behavior. This classification helps in releasing targeted ads, which is not as effective if implemented through television, radio or print medium.
2. Which key performance indicators do you consider to measure the performance of your social media initiatives?
Key performance indicators might depend on which social media platform one is using. Generally, the following KPIs should be considered.
- Number of views on videos or on SlideShare content
- Number of comments and mentions
- Number of clicks, likes, and shares
- Number of profile visits
- Number of active followers
- Traffic to the website from social media
There are other KPIs as well, which can be useful for tracking performance on social media seamlessly. The company must identify and target the right KPIs for determining the reach and engagement of the company on the various social media platforms.
3. What are the elements of a viral video?
A viral video has a number of elements.
- Target audience: The company needs to determine who all will be the audience for the content. Generally, it is better to have content that is universal rather than just catering to a niche crowd.
- Time: The first 20 seconds of the video are crucial for making a video compelling since viewers usually decide in the first 20 seconds whether to continue watching the video or not.
- Catchy: Video must carry a catchy phrase to strike the viewers’ imagination right from the beginning. Video titles, for instance, must be catchy enough to encourage viewers to click on the thumbnails and watch the video. An interesting description and meaningful tags can also help.
- Distribution: Besides sharing the video on the relevant social media platform, one may also consider sending the video to bloggers, influencers, and journalists who will find the content relevant.
4. How should one generate more engagement and retweets on Twitter?
More engagement and retweets can be generated by learning the best times to tweet, which helps to connect more Twitter users. We must ensure that the best practices of tweeting are followed, which includes having a maximum of 140 characters in tweets and posting quality images along with relevant hashtags.
5. How can negative comments be handled on social media?
There are 5 steps to deal with negative comments on social media.
- Respond quickly: The first 24 hours are crucial for responding to the negative sentiments. Justify the brand and company only if it is legitimate, or else apologize. No revenge must be sought.
- Create FAQs: You can create a list of FAQs to address the common complaints, queries, etc. posted by the customers.
- Consult community managers: If things go out of control, it is better to consult a community manager, who can handle such reviews and save the brand image.
- No third replies: Never reach a point where the brand responds for the 3rd time on a negative comment since it looks like an argument. Take the conversation offline hereafter.
- Documentation: Each and every aspect of the crisis must be documented and it must include the tweets, Facebook posts, blog posts, comments etc.
6. Do you think Google+ can be a good tool for marketing?
Google+ can be a great tool for sharing content. If a company shares high-quality content on Google+ regularly and gets a lot of +1, then the content gets indexed instantly. This can help the website rank better on target keywords.
7. How can LinkedIn be used for marketing?
LinkedIn is one of the best platforms to boost one’s credentials. Since it has over 467 million users, it is one of the best places to establish the company as an influencer. The company must create posts that are in line with its brand vision, engage the audience, and suits the platform. These posts can position the company as an industry leader and show its commitment towards its customers.
8. What is a good timing to post on social media?
As per various studies, the time between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. is a good time to engage in social media activities. During this time, websites tend to get the highest clickthrough. However, before 8 a.m. and after 8 p.m. is an unsuitable timing to post on social media. Generally, Wednesday afternoon is considered a very good time for posting.
9. How does customer service fit in social media strategy?
Providing customer service on social media is fast becoming a competitive strategy because of the increasing online presence of the companies. Companies are offering support on social media through various means such as via comments on the posts, a response to customers’ reviews, direct support via messages, etc. Companies with a faster response rate definitely have an edge when it comes to customer service.
10. How do you stay updated on the latest innovations and new platforms in social media?
I generally follow a number of industry blogs and websites to update myself about the new platforms and latest innovations. I learn and practice new techniques regularly and try to learn from my peers through their projects.
11. How ROI is calculated for social media??
The process of calculating the ROI begins with ascertaining the company goals and objectives. The following are the ways to check the ROI.
- Customer Acquisition
- Traffic
- Revenue
- Reach
- Contest entries
- Lead generation
- Clicks
Usually, companies go with the Revenue aspect. In this method, we find the ratio of earnings to the expenses made to achieve a certain number of clicks, conversions or impressions. We can also measure Return on Media Advertising (ROMA) by finding the ratio of the number of click/purchases attained by the amount spent on media advertising. However, these methods can be applied only after establishing the marketing goal of the company.
12. How RSS feed works and how it matters?
RSS feed push content to the company’s website so that visitors can have a look at them and subscribe to them. RSS feed is quite important as it eliminates the need for users to keep revisiting the website for new content, and rather the browser informs the user of any updates coming up on the website. With RSS, the browser can also automatically download the new data for its user. The user just needs to enter the URL of the website and then just get all the news aggregated for him at one place.