5 Quick Content Ideas to Share on Social Media

If you're a small business owner, you've probably heard about the importance of content marketing and social media marketing for growing your business. But getting started on social media can be a challenge. Which platforms should you be on? How do you know if what you're sharing is resonating with your audience? Most important of all, what content should you be sharing to begin with?

If just reading these questions is giving you heartburn, don't worry. Good content ideas are all around you if you know where to look. To help make the leap into the world of social media marketing, here are five quick content suggestions for getting started.

1. Customer Testimonials

Positive customer testimonials can be hugely valuable in your marketing (so if you're not collecting them, you should start). Even better, with just a few small tweaks, they can be reused as great social media content. Just share a snippet of a positive testimonial over a nice product or lifestyle photo.

Don't have Photoshop? That's no problem. There are a number of free or low cost apps that let you manipulate photos to include nice filters, captions and more. The Weebly Image Editor is also handy for creating perfect images for your website, which you can then reuse on social media. In addition to testimonials, you can caption your photos with inspirational or humorous quotes or other content that you think will connect with your followers.

2. Behind-the-Scenes Photos

It's a scientific fact that people love seeing how things are made. Okay, maybe there's no scientific research behind this claim, but it's definitely true that behind-the-scenes content is one of the easiest things for small business owners to share online. If you're a maker, the odds are good that you're spending a significant portion of your day creating products anyway. Why not document that process in either photos or video?

Giving your customers a behind-the-scenes look into your operations will help them not only understand how and why your product is better, but also give them insight into you and your employees.

3. Employee Profiles

Taking customers behind-the-scenes to show products are made is one way to build an authentic connection with your customers. Another way is to highlight your employees (including yourself). To build a great brand, you need to have personality, and there's no better way to let it show than in a fun, candid series showing the men and women who live out your brand values every day.

Employee profiles can take a lot of forms, from short videos to blog interviews. Maybe you can turn over the reins of your social media account to one of your employees for a day. Experiment with different formats until you find one that fits your brand personality and lets your employees stand out.

4. Tips and Tricks

The internet is already filled with tips, tricks, and all kinds of “life hacks," so it may not seem worth the effort to share content like this for your business. But showing your customers how best to use your products or services is more than just good content, it's good for your brand.

One of the most important components of content marketing is making sure that the content you share is providing value to the audience. Instructional information, tips and tricks and other “how-to" content helps show that you're not just interested in boosting your sales, but also in improving their lives. Developing this type of content is also fairly easy. After all, who else knows your product better than you?

5. Caption Contest

Finally, a quick content idea that is sure to generate engagement is a contest or special promotion. There are a lot of different types of contests you can run on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, but one of the easiest to do is a caption contest.

While you're documenting behind-the-scenes content, capture some fun, candid photos of yourself or your team. You can then share these on social media and ask your followers to caption them. The person who shares the funniest caption wins a prize. It's that simple. Many brands rely on these types of quick contests to get engagement from their followers and it's a fun way to show off your brand's personality.

At the end of the day, social media and content marketing are just tools to help promote your business. They don't have to be scary or complicated to be effective, so if you're just getting started try some of these tactics on for size. The more you experiment, the better you'll get and before long you'll be running your social media channels like a true pro.

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