Six content bucket ideas for your social media strategy
Struggling to come up with ideas for content that truly resonates with your followers? You’re not alone. That’s one of the top social media struggles that we learn about during Strategy Sessions with our clients.
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Consider dividing your content into buckets. Content buckets (categories) are topics that speak to different aspects of your business and demographics. These categories have one thing in mind: your business’ mission.
Here are some examples of content buckets:
Entertainment
Posts that are entertaining capture viewers who are on the platform to enjoy themselves. Sometimes you have to take off your business hat and put on your consumer hat to see the bigger picture. Whether it’s a funny meme or breaking news, this content has a potential to be shared and shows your business in the light of “just like me” and less “company.”
Inspiration
Inspirational posts can be quotes, trivia, or personal stories from client achievements. Think case studies and testimonials or failures and successes public figures or yourself have faced along the way.
Conversation
If your post idea lends itself to a conversation, start one. Your followers want to be listened to, not just talked at. Don’t just share something: Tell your audience what you think about the topic and ask what your audience to do the same. Ask a question, invite them to take part in a poll (Facebook posts, Instagram stories, and Twitter have a feature for this built in), have them fill in the blank or even ask for advice.
Education
Educational posts work especially well for the coaching or teaching industries but lend itself to any service or product-based business. Build the trust factor and position yourself as an industry leader with pieces of your wisdom. Link a blog post, answer a FAQ, provide a tip or consider going Live. This type of content category warms your viewers up to what you’re selling.
Connection
Always strive to connect with your audience on a personal level. People buy from people. The more authentic you are on social media, the better chance you have of making a one-on-one connection. You can share behind-the-scenes moments, appreciation for employees, customers and complementary business alike, and the community you work in, to start.
Promotion
Generally speaking, about 20 percent of your social media content should be promotional. Social media is all about providing value, and if you’re constantly posting sales pitches your audience will lose interest — fast. We recommend a 3:2 ratio of knowledge, value and community minded posts to sales posts. Promote product and or services, an event, email subscription, and discounts.
Some of these buckets will have crossover sometimes, and that’s OK.
When you’re creating content, remember that different platforms work for achieving different goals:
- Facebook, for many brands, drives the most referral traffic to websites, and works best for news and entertainment.
- Instagram is less about driving traffic and more about visual content that is engaging.
- Pinterest is a highly visual platform where infographics really thrive. When creating content, think of it as a search engine.
- LinkedIn is dedicated to professionals. Use it to share industry news and curated articles.
- Twitter encourages retweeting and sharing curated content but requires a lot of nurturing.
Pro tip: If you start running out of ideas, repurpose old content.
About the Author:
Katey Crean is a Social Media Specialist at Hello Social Co. When she’s not crafting social media content for clients, she can be found teaching kiddos musical theater.