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Would you like to quickly and easily find great content to share on social media?
Sharing a lot of useful content is a vital part of networking. You need to not only share content you create, but those others create too. As it can help you build influence and make you the go to person on the web to find content on the topic you specialize in (share). This can help you attract new followers, build relationships and generate sales and leads.
So make use of all the tips mentioned in the article below and find great content to share on social media…
1. Browse Through Social Media:
Of course the best place to find content to share on social media is on social media itself. There are millions of people on these sites sharing tons of content. If you can figure out a way to get hold of this content, you should have an endless supply to share. Below are some tips on how to find quality content to share on various social networks…
a) Twitter: Twitter is a great place for finding content to share as people constantly tweet here.
If you’re already following a lot of people, your feed will fill up with tweets with links to content every few minutes. So make it a habit to follow people who share interesting content.
You could also search for interesting content using the search option: you can find top tweets, tweets from people you follow and all tweets. The hashtags feature can also help you find more content.
Another great place to find tweets is the trending section which can be found on the left side of your Twitter homepage or another Twitter profile. You can also click the change button and look for trends in different regions of the world.
You could also use a tool like SocialOomph that will email you a list of tweets with the keywords you choose. I have written more about this tool in this post.
b) Facebook: Facebook can also be a great source to find content if used wisely. The simplest way to find content is by liking several pages and following others. So whenever you come across an interesting website, visit their Facebook page and like it and also look for top influencers (on Facebook) in the subject or niche you work or specialize in and follow them.
You could also follow lists comprising of pages or followers or create some of your own. You can find some lists to follow on the Add List page on Facebook.
c) Likedin: Again on Linkedin you could do the same thing you do on other social networks, which is to connect with other users, follow people and companies and watch their posts in your feed. But the best place to look for content on Linkedin is Linkedin Today.
Here you can find trending content on Linkedin on various topics. This place has helped me find a lot of quality shareable content.
d) Pinterest: Pinterest is a great place to find visual content. Here again you can just follow profiles, brand pages and boards and look forward to content and images to appear in your feed.
You could also look for content under categories, everything, videos, and popular sections.
2. Visit News Aggregator Websites:
News aggregator websites are places where latest and popular news of all kinds accumulate. You can find content here under various subjects and sectors. A lot of quality shareable content can easily be located on one website itself.
An example of a news aggregator is AllTop. Here the news and posts are organized by website and alphabetically. You can find posts and news from sites like Mashable, Techcrunch, Fast Company, etc. You can also customize your results.
Here’s a list of more news aggregator websites by TopSite.
3. Check Out Top Sites:
Make it a point to check out the top sites. This could be sites like The Huffington Post, The Atlantic, BBC, The Guardian, etc. which post several news articles and posts on various subjects.
You could also check out sites that post articles under your niche. For example If you were looking for articles on Technology you could check out a site like Mashable, if you were looking for articles on Environment or the nature, you could check out National Geographic, articles like those on Food can be found on Bon Appetit, etc. The posts on these sites are usually popular, so you might have a lot of good content to share and they will probably fare well too.
4. Subscribe to RSS Feeds:
Instead of going around and visiting the sites every day, you could do a simpler thing by subscribing to their RSS feeds. Just because Google Reader is going to be discontinued, it doesn’t mean that you completely stop subscribing to RSS feeds, you could start using these 5 alternatives. This way you can choose your favourite articles from your reader and share them.
5. Subscribe by Email:
If you aren’t experienced with using RSS feeds, you can sign up to blog updates through email. You can either subscribe to the RSS feed by email or you can subscribe to the newsletter.
6. Google Alerts:
Google Alerts is another fantastic tool that can help you find fresh content on any topic you are interested in.
Just set up alerts for a keyword (subject) you are interested in finding content on and when anything with your keyword is published on the web, Google will send you updates with links that will take you to the pages.
7. Make Use of Apps:
There are scores and scores of apps which can help you not only locate content, but also manage it in one place. You can then go through all the content you receive and share ones you think will suit your audience.
An example of an app that can be used for this purpose is Flipboard. You can add your social media feed, RSS reader and various other feeds here. All your content will collect in one place and then you can go through it, filter out ones you like and share it across your various networks.
8. Always be on the Lookout for Images:
Keep your eyes open and always be on the lookout for images. Images are popular on sites like Pinterest, Facebook, Google+, etc. Whenever you come across an interesting image, have a good think and see if it would be appropriate to share it on any of your networks.
9. Save Pages for Later:
If you follow all the above steps, you will come across a lot of useful shareable content. But an important point you need to keep in mind, while browsing through all this content, is that you don’t want to share all of it right away. You want to schedule your content to come out at specific time intervals so that you don’t give your followers more content than they can swallow. You can time your content using tools like Hootsuite or Buffer – I have written more about these two tools in this post.
Another option would be to save these on other sites so that you can share them later. You can save them on sites like Pocket (A.K.A Read it Later) or Pearltrees, and when the right time comes you can share them. Another great place to save content is on your Pinterest secret boards.
10. Vary the content you share:
You just shouldn’t share one type of content only. You need to regularly vary the content you share. Of course most of the content you share will probably be blog posts and articles, but you need to inter-space them with educational videos, ebooks, tutorials, white papers, images (like I mentioned earlier), case studies and reports. A great place to find content like white papers, ebooks, reports, etc. would be content syndication services.
So make use of all the ten tips above and you will never run out of fresh content to share on your social networks.
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What methods do you use to find great content to share on social media? Have you got any tips you would like to share with us? Please leave your comments below.
