Every digital marketer knows how important it is to regularly post content on social media. And for many organizations, their flagship platform is Facebook. According to Hootsuite, expert social media managers post on Facebook daily, and even multiple times a day.
That sounds great in principle, but it leaves many marketers with the same burning question every day: what on earth should I post today?
It can be difficult to come up with daily content ideas that continue to feel fresh and engaging. That’s a major reason why so many organizations fail to be consistent in their social media presence.
While the daily churn of creating content can be a grind, here are four ideas for Facebook content that will make your social media planning feel a little more manageable.
1. Harvest Smaller Pieces of Content From Larger Pieces of Content.
Social media content is highly perishable. Any given Facebook post has a shelf life of, at most, a couple of days. In order to get the most out of your content, you may consider repurposing it in different iterations.
If you write a blog post, share the link to Facebook. But then once you have done that, go back to the blog and harvest it for poignant quotes that can be turned into graphics for additional Facebook posts. If you have recently hosted a webinar or video interview, post the link to the full length video on Facebook. But then go back to that video and harvest it for one to two minute clips that can be pulled from the full video and posted natively to Facebook.
For any one piece of longer content, you may be able to harvest five to seven shorter pieces of content that can be shared across an entire week. This will keep you from needing to come up with daily content ideas out of thin air, allowing you to be more consistent with less overall effort.
In other words, social media managers who consistently create top-notch Facebook content know how to do the work once and get credit for it multiple times.
2. Invite Engagement by Asking Questions.
Most organizations use social media, including Facebook, like a megaphone. It amplifies your message to a broader audience. And provided that there isn’t too much surrounding noise, the message gets through. But as most social media managers know, there’s plenty of surrounding noise on Facebook.
That’s why smart social media managers use Facebook less like a megaphone and more like a telephone. They invite two way conversations by asking interesting and engaging questions. And then when people reply to those questions in the comment section, they interact back with those users. This not only endears you to your audience but also earns you favor with the Facebook algorithm.
Your discussion questions should most often be related to the products and services of your business. But more important than that, they should just be interesting — irresistible to answer.
One way to achieve this is by asking questions that generate faux outrage. For example, if you run a hardware store, ask your audience to present their best argument for either standard or metric wrenches. If you’re a restaurant owner, ask people about how they feel about pineapple on their pizza.
Whatever kind of business or organization you are, use the expertise you have about your industry to engage your audience with unique questions that they’ll find interesting. If you’re successful at touching a nerve with your questions, your engagement will go through the roof.
3. Offer Your Followers a Behind-the-Scenes Look at Your Organization.
It has often been said that people don’t follow organizations; they follow people. So don’t be afraid to show the human aspects of your organization. As much as people love slick graphics and highly produced content, they love getting a behind-the-scenes look even more.
Give your audience a look at who your organization is, who’s on your team, and the things you value as humans. You can give people a live-streamed tour of your office or share unedited photos of important meetings or team workspaces. You might even consider highlighting the different members of your organization, sharing a bit of their story and giving your audience the “who” behind your company’s logo and branding.
Make it personal. Make it real. Your Facebook audience is bound to enjoy getting to know you.
4. Feature Your Products or Services in Action (But Not in a Salesy Way).
Your organization exists because of the belief that it offers something that will make the lives of others better. Social media marketers prove that belief to be true through compelling content.
But the trick is to provide proof that your organization’s products and services are worth investing in without coming across as a salesperson with every post. If every post on your Facebook feed includes a link to a sales action, your engagement is likely to plummet.
In fact, organizations that are the most successful at getting click-throughs on any given CTA are the ones that make a sales push in no more than 20 percent of their Facebook posts. This is what Brady Shearer refers to as the “1-in-5 Rule.” For highly engaging social media managers, the percentage is even lower than that.
Nevertheless, you can demonstrate why your product or service is worth it without always pointing your audience to a direct call to action. The best way to do this is by telling stories. The tendency with these kinds of case studies is to make your organization the hero of the story, but truly engaging stories put the spotlight on the person whose story you’re telling. They are the hero. Your product or service was just one thing that helped them along the way.
These kinds of stories help to humanize your organization as a whole, building trust with your audience and giving them the sense that you exist to serve them.
Pick Your Content Categories and Be Consistent.
One way to maintain consistency in posting top-notch Facebook content is to create a regular cadence of various content types. To create that cadence, you may consider outlining a weekly or monthly calendar that defines what types of content will be posted to Facebook on which days.
By defining those rhythms, you will minimize the creative drain any one post will exact. You might not know precisely what piece of content you will post three Tuesdays from now. But you can know the type of content, whether it is a short form video, branded graphic, customer story, or behind-the-scenes look. You only need to find or create something that will fill that spot.
This defined structure will enable you to focus your creativity on what matters most: creating a top-notch piece of Facebook content for that day.
