Your Week in Social Media Posts
Coming up with regular posts for social media can be really difficult. Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter or even another platform that is your key window to your target audience, coming up with ideas for regular content is important for growth of followers and engagement.
But, how can you do this, especially on an ongoing basis? Let’s explore what sorts of repurposing and prompts we can use for content in our social media posts.
Keep learning…keep an open mind…keep track
One of the main difficulties with social media is that ‘best practice advice’ seems to change all of the time. I also feel a lot of business owners have unrealistic expectations of what social media will achieve, because we are bombarded with ‘fake news’ or advertising about how people make six figures from one post!
For some creators, social media alone can be a massive income stream, but for most businesses, social media is a way to grow visibility, build an audience and encourage engagement. It is not a straight forward, post = money!
Therefore, my advice with social media is always to be focussed on a) realistic goals and measure those, and b) keep learning. Devour any tips you can get hold of. Have a strategy and try new things too, but with realistic expectation.
Scheduling and reusing – making social media less of a burden
Another way to keep social media manageable is to schedule as much as you can. The physical scheduling isn’t too difficult, with lots of tools to help you. We actually cover this in my membership, The Content Club, if you want a simple to follow guide.
However, having lots of content ideas and posts to actually schedule is the difficult part!
I advocate having a monthly topic – this helps not only with creation of cornerstone content, such as blogs, videos and emails, but also with what to share or cover on social media.
Having a topic, can then be combined with ‘theme’ or ‘prompt’ which you use regularly on a weekly or monthly basis, on a particular day of the week.
This developed on Facebook (as well as Twitter with posts such as #ThrowbackThursday and #FollowFriday). Having specific types of posts for different days is very popular, particularly in Facebook groups, to get members to share ideas and engage within the group.
If nothing else, using two or three regular ‘topics’ for your own social media output, hopefully means coming up with ideas is a little bit easier each week or each month. Think about your business and what types of areas would best promote what you do and the message or story you want to convey. Then, create your own ‘names’ for particular types of post on a particular day.
In particular, consider what you could include on rotation – tips, introductions, suggestion, invitations to share pages, posts, etc., can all be used again again. And we love content that can be reused …quick win!
Social media post idea, related to the different days of the week
To give you a helping hand, I have come up with some ideas that can be adapted for any business, for each day of the week. (To be honest, I just had some fun with alliteration!!!)
Pick a couple and boost engagement on your page or in your group, make content creation easier and reuse as much as possible…
Monday
Monday Moments – share something exciting from your business, like a photo or video every Monday. Capture a ‘moment’ to share with your audience.
Monday Motivation – can you offer advice and motivation on a Monday to start your followers off on a good footing for their week?
Monday Makes – if you own a creative business, could you show off some of your skills or share short videos on how to make something or of things that you have recently made?
Monday Memories – with apps like ‘Time Hop’, Photo memories and ‘On this day’ type notifications, you could share past photos or posts. It’s a great way to show development and change in your business, as well as its history.
Tuesday
Tuesday Tips – everyone loves useful tips!
Tuesday Twist – could you offer something a bit weird and wacky? Perhaps strange facts related to your industry.
Tuesday Tactics – A bit like tips, but perhaps you can offer more guidance style posts every Tuesday, say for time management or personal organisation, or something like that.
Tuesday Tags – stealing the ‘Follow Friday’ idea, tag a fellow business, person or group that you want to recommend.
Tuesday Troubles – trying to keep it positive, rather than sharing all of your woes (!) why not ask your followers to share their troubles (relevant to your business, of course)? Perhaps, you can offer some help in return.
Wednesday
Quick Win Wednesday – offer a ‘quick win’ to help my followers with their content output.
Wednesday Wisdom – Like tips, can you offer some amazing pieces of wisdom or ask for your followers to share their own pieces of wisdom and advice on a particular topic.
Wonderful Wednesday – Fill everyone’s newsfeed with positivity! Share your own successes or stories of happiness and delight. Again, invite your followers to share their happy stories too.
Thursday
Thirsty Thursday – Would a drink-related post work for your business??? Great if you work in catering or hospitality.
Thankful Thursday – Always nice to be thankful! Who could you thank this week? Or invite your followers to thank someone important and tag them!
Thinking Thursday – This could be used in a number of ways – perhaps a good opportunity for being reflective or encouraging followers to consider something about the environment or buy local, etc.
Thrifty Thursday – Would posts about saving money or resources work for your business and be useful for your followers?
Thursday Theories – If you have a STEM business or just know loads of facts and theories, this could be a fun weekly post. I would love a conspiracy theory one!
Friday
Friday Fun – This is another one of mine that I used for ages on Facebook! I like to share posts, stories and articles which are funny often related to word use. I also like sharing quizzes…which aren’t too serious. It’s great getting everyone to comment with their results. Could work well on LinkedIn too? Bit like the social media post version of ‘dress down Friday’.
Funky Friday – Do you offer fun, funky products? Could you feature one of these each Friday? Perhaps, you work with fashion or homeware.
Fabulous Friday – Again, share the love! What is making you feel fabulous?
Saturday
Special Offer Saturday – this doesn’t have to be a weekly post, but perhaps consider launching your special offers on the same day of the week each time.
Saturday Shares – It is so important for fellow small businesses to have your support – so share your favourite (business relevant-ish) pages!
Saturday Success – I am all about sharing the love! Tell the world about what has gone well and encourage your followers to get involved too.
Sunday
Sunday Celebrations – as above…spread the happiness…ok…I must stop offering all of these sunny, happy ones!
Sunday Sense – A bit like tips, can you offer some good words of sense to help people as they start a new week or reflect on the week just gone by.
Social Media Sunday – An extension to sharing other Facebook pages, you can share other social media pages, such as Instagram accounts or LinkedIn groups – as well as your own, of course. If you work in B2B, then ask your followers to share their business social media pages too.
Silly Sunday – A bit like Friday Fun, why not add a bit of silliness – funny memes, pics and gifs always grab people’s attention. Just make sure they are appropriate!!!
Inspired to think of your own?
I bet with a little thought and with these as inspiration, you’ll be able to come up with some fabulous social media post themes of your own! It really helps when at least 2-4 times a month, you have a ‘category’ or prompt with which to craft the content for your posts.
Let me know any of your own ideas too. Comment below.
I like it as having difficulty sometimes getting out, as having op’s which means I can’t get out as much as I like to. Or do things for myself as I would like to its nice to know what’s going on in the village