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Esther
Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning marketing podcast. I'm Esther and I'm Melanie. And today we're talking about where to find curated content for your social media platforms.
Melanie
So why are we looking to talk about curated content, especially if it's somebody else's? Because people are following us already? Well, that's the hope, because they find our content already interesting. But if we constantly bang on about ourselves, they'll stop finding it quite so interesting.
Esther
That's right. And so we recommend that you find content from other people who share your ideals, share your knowledge, your expertise, share your vision of what it is that you want them to share.
Melanie
So ideally, share your audience as well.
Esther
Yeah, yeah. Ideally have the same sort of audience, the same ideal buyer persona that you have. OK, we're not looking to go into competition with them. We're looking to share their knowledge with your audience.
Melanie
So we've been having a good long chat, myself and Esther. We tend to do this and we've decided on a few of the platforms that we currently use. We never going to talk about ones we don't use or ones we've had bad experiences with. It just wouldn't be fair. But I currently use Post Planner to find curated content. What I enjoy about is Post Planner is it helps me find the content in the related areas that I'm looking for. So for me would be marketing. And not only can it help me source the content, it can help me post and schedule the content as well. What about you Esther?
Esther
The one I use is Social Pilot and it again I can put into the search bar what I'm looking for, whether it be like Melanie's marketing or web design or any of the topic that I'm interested in sharing with my audience. And it pulls up relevant content, recent content from all around the world. So we're not just looking to share from other people who have businesses like ours in the same locality as us.
Melanie
But there's also free downloadable that we've all come across in the past, like the Twitter business calendar, which is something you can find on Google and download, and it gives you all of the prominent dates in your sector and what will be trending sectors like the Oscars and the Grammys and that sort of thing. And you can add that into your planning schedule now. And then there's another web site called Days of the Year, which is a fabulous website, I've got to say the weirdest and most strangest holidays.
Esther
Yeah, like, there's Bring Your Dog to Work Day, there's Black Cat Appreciation Day. There's thank a farmer day. You should always thank a farmer every day. Without them, you wouldn't have anything to eat, remember?
Melanie
I suppose so.
Esther
There's all these weird and wonderful days they might not all fit into your schedule or into your audience, but it can also be a bit fun to share some of the random days and they sometimes tend to be trending those days as well.
Melanie
Yeah, I mean, the great thing is, is that you've got an idea of when these days are coming up, if it's something that you particularly care about, you can either write a blog about it so that you can share it using that hashtag or you can lead up to a special event. I mean, the next biggest event for me here in Ireland would be the Dublin Tech Summit. And so I'm going to be following the hashtag for them over the next few months on all the different platforms just to see who they've got engaging, who's going to be speaking, who's going to be sponsoring. So this kind of topic can actually really help you and your build up in leading up to generating a decent calendar of content.
Esther
Yeah. And also, if you do things like what Melanie's suggesting, you can also then find other people who will be attending the event that you can interact with them beforehand and then made up for a coffee at the event. That's always a good thing to do too. So Melanie, when you were starting to find curated content, how did you start before using any paid platforms? What did you do?
Melanie
Oh, God, yeah. When I first started, I had zero budget.
Esther
Didn't we all.
Melanie
Oh, yeah. And so when I initially started, I put the word marketing or social media or the name of the platform I wanted to look up into Google and then hit the news tab on Google. And that would give me all the latest news over the previous few days a week. And then I would share that content out. It was hard going, very hard going, but until I could actually afford to to pay for a platform, it was a start.
Esther
Yeah, and it's also important to remember that on places like Google, it's important that you only share out and reputable pages. So, for example, I mean, on Google, there's everything, there's all the tabloids, there's all the digital marketing agencies online and those that have their magazines and things, all of them end up on Google in the news section, so if you don't share the opinions of the writers, make sure you read the content before you share it, because otherwise it could end up having a little nugget in there that you haven't expected. And all of a sudden you are getting comments from your audience going, why did you share that? That doesn't sound like you. It's not something that we always find from you. And another thing, don't just share it and not say a word. OK, write your summary of what it is that you're sharing.
Melanie
Well, that's even better confirmation that you've actually read it but, you know, we're not perfect. And if you don't do that already and you're already sharing content without commenting about everything, that's fine. But just don't do it all the time. You need to show an interest in what you're showing to your audience. At the end of the day, you're the one generating the audience. And if you don't understand what you're sharing to them, they might not pay any attention.
Esther
Yeah, absolutely. And if there is one but you're sharing and it has top 10 tips, explain why you prefer number five over number seven, for example, don't just use the click bait. Oh number five is very interesting. Or you're going to love what number six says.
Melanie
I just think it works sometimes.
Esther
Sometimes, but not all the time. I mean, be a bit intriguing, but give it away as well. You know, I love number five because it works for my business, you know, that sort of idea.
Melanie
Okay. So do you reckon on the next post on Facebook should be something like that? Let's say six minutes into the podcast. You should hear our conversation.
Esther
We could try it and say I'm game.
Melanie
So finding content is really, really difficult. We all struggle with it, especially if you're fairly new at the end of the day and you're worried that other people's content is going to perhaps detract from what you know, from what your knowledge is. It honestly doesn't. There's a certain spin the certain way you speak about your own content that isn't shared by others because they don't have your personality. They don't have your way of writing, your way of monopolizing the information. So don't be afraid to share other people's content. It just keeps your audience interested. And the more you're seen as a guilty person for a certain subject matter, the better it is. Honestly.
Esther
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it can also help give you ideas about what to write about next. So when you're looking for information about obviously in our case, we're looking for marketing ideas and what people are talking about right now. So it helps us to be able to then put together a better blog and better content for our own proper audience than just sharing what other people have written. There's value in both.
And the other thing I think I highly recommend actually is start writing down the questions that people are broaching with, so any phone calls next week of networking. And even if you're in a Twitter chat somewhere, write down the questions people ask you. Because the crazy thing is, is that you assume people know what you know. The whole point that you're in business is because people don't, it doesn't matter whether you're, you know, cleaning houses or a childminder or a dog sitter or another marketer in the social space, you can't assume people know exactly what you know. So, I mean, I've had somebody only earlier on this morning saying to me, I'm not sure how to schedule an Instagram post, for me that is that's just so basic. I know how to do it. But they didn't. And you've got it. You can't assume people know what you know. So you need to keep on putting out these frequently asked questions because they are essentially epigraphy.
Esther
Yeah. And keep it that it's in a language other people can understand. So that you're not going all technical on them because if they don't know what it is, they're definitely not going to know what you're talking about. If you go very technical.
Melanie
Jargon is no jargon is.
Esther
OK, so if you have any questions, we are here to help, and Melanie is there any homework for this week.
Melanie
Yes, simple homework. Please start exploring around now. We've mentioned a couple of places where you can look up for stuff. So we've mentioned Social Pilot, we've mentioned Post Planner, but there are loads of others, says Irish business ft. Alpha there's these downloadable that you can get off like from Twitter, from the Twitter business calendar and Days of the Year, which is a Web app. But have a look around. There's plenty out there.
Esther
Yeah, OK. And we'll be back next week for more marketing podcasts. Thank you.
Melanie
Bye bye.