Melody

Your social media presence is an extension of you and your business/brand/blog. You’ll want to make sure your posts are sending the right message to your audience, that your content is top quality, and that the posts are optimized for each social media platform. Before you hit that “post” button, run through this checklist of do’s and don’ts to make sure you don’t end up with a post you might need to delete later!

Do’s of Posting on Social Media

Your social media etiquette can earn you lots of new followers, friends, and traffic if you approach it correctly. Of course, this shouldn’t be your only motivation for posting, but if you’re taking the time to put out valuable content, the rest follows.

1. Think about your message

You want each post to be a true reflection of yourself or your business, but you also want to think about how your viewers will perceive your post. If you want to post about a trending topic, check hashtags or other posts to make sure you’re not saying something people may think is insensitive.

2. Use images in your posts

Surveys find that users are most likely to share content in the form of an image as opposed to videos/live videos or written content. Posts with images are also ten times more likely to receive engagement. So don’t forget to add an eye-catching image!

3. Deliver value

Value comes in many forms. Generally, you want to go for something helpful (motivating the reader to do or learn something) or entertaining (evoking some emotion such as joy or surprise). If you can do one or both of these things, your audience will be more likely to interact with the content and share it with others.

4. Consider your tone

Having a consistent tone throughout all of your posts helps to reinforce your brand. Maybe humor and sarcasm is your thing. Maybe you want to be relatable and inspiring. Whatever it is, keep it consistent. Being positive and upbeat never hurts, either!

5. Check spelling and grammar

Even a short, two-sentence Tweet should be spellchecked! We all make mistakes, but this one is easy to fix. You can even run your text through writing tools such as Grammarly to easily pick up errors.

6. Credit others for their content

If you have a cool photo or quote, tag the person it came from. They’ll appreciate the shoutout and who knows, it could lead to a great new relationship or collaboration!

7. Interact with your audience

Put the “social” in social media and don’t ignore messages, comments, and questions! Your followers will remember if you never replied to their question and may not be loyal when another competitor comes along. Take the time to interact and you will be rewarded. Even a quick “thanks for your comment!” goes a long way. 

Don’ts of Posting on Social Media

And then there are things you probably shouldn’t do on social media unless you want to start losing your audience! Here are some things to avoid.

1. Avoid sharing very strong opinions

Some topics (such as politics) may be better left for a smaller, private audience. If you want to share an opinion about controversial topics, consider whether you might regret the post in a day, a week, or a month.

2. Don’t let emotions get in the way

If you find yourself getting very heated over a topic and want to rant to your followers, pause for a moment, and ask yourself if you’re letting emotions get in the way. If so, wait until you’ve cleared your head to post.

3. Don’t stuff hashtags and keywords

Focus on writing text that actually makes sense and is easy to read. Add in a few select keywords and hashtags afterward, if they fit in with the text. Don’t force anything that sounds unnatural. 

4. Don’t spam people’s feeds

Being consistent with posting is one thing, but spamming your followers’ feed is not good practice. Keep in mind what time you post and how often. As far as when to post, you’ll want to check your analytics to see when your target audience is online (morning, weekends, etc). 

Here are general guidelines on how often to post on different platforms: 

• Twitter: experts recommend anything from 3 to 30 times a day. Another rule of thumb is to post no more than once per hour.
• Facebook: 1-2 times a day
• Instagram: 1-3 times a day
• LinkedIn: once a day on weekdays
• YouTube: set a consistent schedule such as a new video every Thursday. That way, your followers will know when to expect new content on your channel.

Keeping track of what to post and when to post can be overwhelming. You’re busy keeping up with all the other aspects of running your brand, so who’s got the time?

With Community Sharer, posting to social media is automated—it doesn’t get any easier! First, fill your community with fellow bloggers and entrepreneurs that align with your interests. Community Sharer automatically searches for any new content from them and shares it on your social media!

You can set the maximum number of posts per day so you don’t saturate your followers’ feed with content. You can also choose to turn on automatic sharing, or set your profile to manually approve each new post before it’s shared.

When you genuinely care about your audience and giving them the best content, it shows. Helping people without necessarily expecting anything in return is the best way to build trust and to keep them coming back!

An online community is a group with shared interests on any topic you can imagine, whether it’s personal finance, sewing, or pet photography. These communities exist on forums, social media, or an actual website. Your community is the perfect place to share advice or just chat about relevant topics, but it’s also a great way to find and share content. It’s a no-brainer since you already know the content matches your area of interest. 

Also, if you share stuff from your community friends, it’s mutually beneficial. Their content gets more exposure, you have more content to share without having to create your own, and your friends will be more likely to share your stuff in return!

So how do you find the best content from your community? Here’s a guide to get you started.

Find The Right Members

If you want to find great content in your community, first you need to attract the right members to your clan! Look for experts in your niche who can add real value to the community. 

The hard part can be getting people interested in joining. Here are some ways to grow your community:

• Invite new people. Sounds obvious, right? However, you should take the time to build a relationship with them first and even offer them some freebies. This could be free advice, one of your ebooks, or a personalized group within your community exclusively for their readers.
• Ask existing members to invite their friends. You can offer some incentives if they get a certain amount of friends to join as a motivator. 
• See if any members are willing to be recruiters. The best promoters of your community are members who already love it!
• Interview a community member or ask them for a quote for your article. They’ll be more likely to ask their friends to check out the content and share it.

Find The Right Content

Now that you’ve got some new members, here’s how to find and share the best content from your community. These are some awesome tools to get you going!

Mention

Mention allows you to monitor over 1 billion sources such as blogs, forums, news sites, etc. Specifically, you can monitor relevant topics and also use the results to find new community members, along with other topics those members might be interested in.

Facebook Groups and Pages

Most Facebook Groups are targeted at a specific niche, so chances are the members of these groups would also be interested in your community of the same niche. You can also look for content that members are sharing within these groups. You can also follow Facebook Pages of top bloggers in your niche so you’ll know when they share new content.

Reddit

Reddit contains tons of niche communities, called subreddits. These subreddit communities are moderated by members and have set rules, which helps ensure the content is relevant and useful. Within any subreddit, you can sort content by top, hot, new, and rising content, which makes your search much easier.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo allows you to easily find top content when you search for specific keywords relevant to your community. The app shows you which posts have the most Facebook engagement, Twitter shares, Pinterest shares, etc. You can also view backlinks from other blogs to that post.

Community Sharer

Community Sharer automates sharing the best content from your community. All you need to do is have community members add their sites. Every few hours, Community Sharer automatically checks all the sites in your community for new posts and adds them to your Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest feed. Doesn’t get any easier than that!

Share the Best Stuff 

Sharing great content from your community is a win-win! Your members will appreciate getting more exposure and in turn, they’ll spread the word about your site. You’ll have high-quality content to share on your site without having to put the hard work in creating it yourself. So let’s get sharing!

Finding high-quality social media content to share with your audience requires a few things—time, practice, and a bit of strategy. If the average person has an attention span of only 8 seconds, you don’t have much time to capture your audience’s interest. That means your feed needs to be super engaging!

So how do you weed through the enormous amount of content out there to find top-notch stuff? Here’s a guide on how to curate the best content to share with your community, including what to look for and where to find the content.

Provide Super Useful Content

Maybe you read a personal finance blog post that helped you save $200 on your bills. Maybe you found a diet regimen that works better than the 10 other plans you’ve tried, and you’ve already lost 5 pounds. Don’t you think someone else out there might benefit from this content too? If you’d want to see it on your own social media feeds, others would too.

One of Neil Patel’s philosophies for creating awesome content is, “If you don’t have anything useful to say, then don’t say it at all.” You can apply this idea to finding content too. If it’s not clear how you can benefit from the content, don’t share it.

Get a Reaction

This is the kind of content that evokes a powerful emotional response. Have you ever sent someone a post that made them go, “Whoa, crazy!”?

There are many ways people can react to something. They might be excited, scared, disgusted, angry, sad, or incredulous. However, one of the most powerful emotions in social media marketing is happiness. According to Business Insider, a recent study found that “content that has a positive emotional narrative was shared more often than content with a negative one.” 

The takeaway is that people inherently want to feel good and be happy. Consider this the next time you’re combing your feeds for shareable material!

Post the Most Relevant Stuff

Be conscious of when you share the content, especially if your niche tends to be seasonal (for example, DIY or home decor trends revolve around seasons and holidays). This is why staying up-to-date with trends in your niche is super important. 

Make sure you’re not sharing something on how to save money during Christmas while it’s still summer!

Social Media = Sharing

Whether the content is really useful or extremely compelling, social media thrives on sharing the content with others. Just think of Marie Kondo asking you, “Does this spark joy?” If you can’t wait to message or email your friend about something, it’s probably worth sharing with your community.

To get some inspiration, look through the social media posts you’ve already shared with friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever platform floats your boat. Why did you share that particular content? If you felt compelled to hit that “share” button, there must have been a specific reason. Figure out the “why” and try to replicate that in every piece of content you share.

Where to Find High-Quality Content

Now that you know what to look for, where can you go to find it? One strategy is to use platforms you’re already on to look for great content. Here’s a list, along with some tips and tricks, to get you started.

1. Twitter

Of course, sharing relevant stuff from people you follow on Twitter can be a great way to find content. But you can also use Twitter as a search engine to help you find targeted content in your niche. 

Twitter’s advanced search options allow you to search by hashtag, mentions of specific usernames, exact phrases, and more. You can even save these search options for quick access later. 

2. Pinterest

Pinterest is the ultimate visual search engine. If your niche contains a lot of visual content, Pinterest is a powerful tool you can harness. 

If you don’t already, upgrade your account to a Pinterest Business account. You’ll get access to Pinterest analytics, including the ability to see what content you’ve pinned is a top performer. You can also use a third-party application like Tailwind for more detailed analytics.

3. Google Alerts and Google Trends

You can set up Google Alerts to email you anytime content on your desired topic or keyword is published online. You can customize your settings to receive “only the best results” to help you filter out content.

Google Trends shows you what people in all parts of the world are searching for. You can see what keywords are trending and use that as a starting point, or search for your target keywords to view who’s interested at a given time or in a particular location.

4. Content Aggregators

Sites such as Reddit, Bloglovin, Feedly, or other content aggregators are an easy place to find a lot of awesome content from many sites, all in one place. On Reddit, you can find a community for just about any topic you want. It’s a treasure trove of content waiting for you, if you’re willing to dive in and sift through everything! 

Bloglovin particularly great if your niche is in fashion, beauty, lifestyle, home design, and DIY projects. You can discover a ton of great content in these categories and find new blogs to follow.

Feedly is a news aggregator that allows you to easily organize and read about the latest news in your industry. The sophisticated AI learns what content you want more of and what content you don’t want, resulting in a highly customized feed.

5. BuzzSumo 

BuzzSumo has many awesome features such as Content Discovery and Content Research. You can browse trending topics, find new topics and content, and search forum posts (Quora, Reddit, Amazon, etc.) to see what your audience is asking about.

6. Email Newsletters 

Sign up for emails from other blogs in your niche, including potential competitors and top blogs. You can search Google for “top X blogs” or “top X sites” (X equals your niche) to find lists of the best blogs. You can also use keyword research tools like Ubersuggest to see what sites rank at the top for that particular keyword. 

Then, check out their sites to see what content is popular, and subscribe to their newsletter to get the latest updates. Chances are, they’ll be among the first to post about hot topics.

7. YouTube

Don’t forget about curating video content! The nice thing about YouTube is, once you search for and find a video that fits what you’re looking for, YouTube automatically populates your account with related videos that you can also use for content.

8. Instagram

Naturally, Instagram is the place to find visually-stunning content to share. One strategy is to do some hashtag research. Compile a list of the most relevant hashtags and make sure to follow them on Instagram. Also research other blogs and brands that are in your industry and follow them on Instagram. 

Besides beautiful photos, Instagram is also a great place to curate inspirational quotes, tutorials (including videos), cool stories, etc. Just make sure to credit your source properly.

9. Pocket

Pocket is a handy app that allows you to save interesting articles you want to read later. You can create custom categories to organize the content and even highlight key passages you want to remember. Once you save some articles, Pocket generates a list of recommended articles related to your interests.

10.  Facebook

Of course, there’s Facebook. Finding shareable content can be as simple as asking your Facebook followers or fellow group members what they like to see, and where they find their favorite content. You can also check out all of the sections under “Explore” to find the top Facebook Group categories, top Pages suggestions, popular videos, etc.

How to Share Content

Now that you have your content, what’s the best way to share it? Here’s an overview on sharing across different social media platforms:

Community Sharer

Community Sharer is an awesome way to automate your sharing, saving you tons of time. Use Community Sharer to collect a variety of top content from your niche and automatically look for new posts from your favorite sites. Basically your own social media curator on autopilot!

You can create multiple “communities,” each with their own homepage and members. You can allow members to add to the community feed and they can invite others to join.

Twitter

Many people use Twitter to catch up on the latest news, and typically check their account multiple times a day. Twitter is one of those platforms where it’s okay to post multiple times a day without being spammy. 

Use Twitter to update your followers on breaking news and recent trends in your industry. To keep it interesting, don’t just post text. Try adding links, images, animations, or even videos to see what works best for your account.

Facebook

If you haven’t tried videos and live videos on your Facebook Page, it might be time to start! Videos are more engaging than images and text in many cases. If you’re not looking to get in front of a camera, try creating your own animated videos. Apps like Moovly and Animaker make it easy to get started. You can also launch your YouTube channel with all these awesome videos you’re making!

Instagram

Again, visually-pleasing, high-quality images are king on Instagram. But you don’t have to stress if you’re not the best photographer. The great thing about social media is that you don’t have to rely on yourself to create all of the content. Use the tips above to curate your content. 

If you’re sharing quotes or stories, you can create eye-catching graphics to go with the text. If you’re not a graphic design whiz, Canva is a powerful tool that allows anyone to design beautiful graphics in no time.

Pinterest 

This is another platform that relies heavily on images, although the images you want to use can be quite different from Instagram.

Beautiful photos are still great on Pinterest, particularly for things like home design inspiration or food, but you also want to focus on images with text. Look for images with enough text to get you interested in clicking on the link. Too much text might turn people off because the pinned image tends to be hard to read unless you click to enlarge it.

Infographics are popular on Pinterest because they contain easily digestible information in one little image. You can search for keywords like, “how to save money” or “tips on cleaning your home” to see what infographics pop up. 

Start Sharing

So there you have it! How to find interesting content that engages your audience, where to find that content, and how to share it. 

There’s so much information on our feed these days, there’s no room for junk content to clutter it up. Do your audience a favor and don’t clutter theirs up, either. They’ll appreciate you as a curator and continue following you for the latest and greatest content.