You can lighten your social media content creation load by sharing relevant content from other sources. Businesses often assume they should only post original content on their social media accounts. This isn’t necessary, or even a good strategy!
Curating relevant content from other sources can:
- 👋 introduce your services or product to new audiences. It’s common for the author of a post to engage when someone shares their content. Once the original author engages, their audiences will see your post in their newsfeeds.
- 🙌 lighten your content creation burden. Obviously it takes less time to share content than to create it. This is your standard “work smarter, not harder” situation.
- 👊 position you or your company as an industry expert. You’ll likely read 10 mediocre pieces of content for every 1 worth sharing with your networks. This practice does 3 things: 1) helps you to stay up with industry trends, 2) provides real-life examples for you of what works and what doesn’t work in content marketing, 3) builds credibility with your audiences when you are only sharing the best of the best.
“But, wait!” you think to yourself. “Sharing content won’t point my social media followers back to my website! It will lead them to someone else’s social media profile or website! How am I supposed to generate leads if my content points people somewhere else!?!”
You’re right. While sharing relevant content from other sources is an important social media strategy, it should not be your only social media strategy. Marketing experts generally agree that 50%+ of your social media content can be shared content:
Marketing experts also agree that boring, proportion driven names were the best way to denote their recommended content ratio strategies.
Marketing experts generally agree that 50%+ of your social media content can be shared content.
Ok, so I’ve convinced you that sharing relevant content from other sources on your social media is a good strategy to grow your online presence. Now what?
Follow accounts you trust. Read their content. Share the best of their content.
Here are the 5 types of social media accounts you should follow and peruse for great content for you to share:
- Experts in your field.
- Other businesses like yours doing great work (though, obviously, not competitors).
- Industry membership organizations.
- Industry conference associations.
- General business news like Ted or Harvard Business Review.
It’s important to note that your found media, as well as your original content, should focus on your business. If you sell shoes, don’t share content about how to train tigers (unless you specifically sell shoes to tiger trainers!). Content from outside of your sphere, even if it’s great content, will muddle your message and disengage your audience.
*One last tip for sharing found content
Sure, you can just click the “share” button and cross “post on social” off your to-do list. But, your content will be even more relevant to your audiences and make you look even more plugged in to you industry if you take the time to write up a sentence or two about why you’re sharing the content. Here are some examples:
- 📌 Actionable #emailmarketing tips here! <shared content>
- You don’t want to miss these 5 trends that are here to stay in web design, all of which will improve your users’ experiences and ultimately convert more visitors into customers. <shared content>
- Great case study on how Netflix removes psychological barriers throughout the buyer’s journey to increase conversions. <shared content>
Building an engaging social media presence requires a mix of original and curated content. If your social media efforts would benefit from a more strategic approach, let’s talk. Or if you’d like to see this strategy in action, follow me on LinkedIn.