Rachael Mockalis
It’s no secret that social media has become one of the most important parts of a marketing strategy, but you might be under-utilizing another important reason for your brand’s social media presence. With social media at your fingertips, your team has a whole new avenue for market research.
You can incorporate what you learn from social media into all aspects of your marketing strategy, including your next blog post’s subject. If you’re unused to considering social media as an avenue for inspiration, however, you might not know where to begin.
Fortunately, we’re here to help! Let’s take a look at some of our favorite tips for brainstorming blog posts using social media.
Tip 1: Look at Your Comments Section
Obviously, you should take inspiration from your most successful social media posts. With so many metrics available online, though, you might wonder how you should gauge success. Do you look at likes? Shares? Reposts?
Our recommendation: look at your comments first. How are people reacting to your post? What do they have to say? Are there any common questions, discussions, or reactions? In answering those common questions, contributing to those discussions, or responding to those reactions, you might find a topic for your blog post.
For example: If your software company posts about data your new program collects, and you keep seeing comments asking why a certain type of data is important, you could write a blog post explaining why those data points are important.
Not only will answering these questions pull people to your blog, but they will help your audience feel heard. They will appreciate your attentiveness and responsiveness.
Tip 2: Listen to Chatter
Follow your brand’s hashtags and pay attention to what people are saying about your product or service. Similar to reviewing your comments section, you can take a look at the ongoing discussion about your brand. This way, you can easily access questions people may be asking, complaints they might have, things they like, and et cetera.
Not only can this help improve your marketing strategy as a whole, but it can also provide a wide array of potential topics for you to write about.
Tip 3: Look at What Your Audience Likes
Not only can you keep track of which of your posts are successful with your audience, but what other posts they enjoy. You might notice the people who follow your bakery’s Instagram also follow various art accounts. Taking that information into account, you might realize a portion of your audience follows you for your artistic cake designs. Now you can write a variety of blogs about the “art” in “culinary arts.”
This applies to any sort of business, too. If you find your audience members tend to share a common interest other than your brand, find how that common interest ties back into your product and service. At this intersection, you’ll find numerous potential blog posts.
Tip 4: Ask Your Audience
Again, one of the biggest benefits of your social media presence is your ability to interact with your audience. Especially since social media platforms often have polling features, you can ask your audience what they’d like to see from your blog.
If you have a few ideas and you’re trying to gauge your audience’s reception, you can put up a multiple-choice poll and ask which they’d prefer. If you’re still at the beginning stages of planning, you can ask what sort of content they’d enjoy seeing on your blog. Their responses could help you determine not only what your next blog post will be, but also whether or not your ideas have any traction.
If it suits your brand, you can also ask your audience to contribute stories related to your image, product, or service, then react to those anecdotes in a blog post. If your marketing strategy is conducive to it, you can even write in an advice-column style.
Tip 5: Review Trending Hashtags
You should also take a trip off your own profile and analytics to look at which hashtags are trending. If any are applicable to your brand, you should jump on the chance to write a blog post on the subject.
Once you have a solid blog post on the subject, you can talk about it on your social media accounts. This will insert your website into the conversation and increase site traffic. This is especially true if you can explain a complicated subject or discuss how it affects your industry.
Conclusion
Social media is not only a tool but a resource. Taking a look at your audience’s reactions and the newest chatter can really help you brainstorm your newest blog post.
Keep an eye on your audience’s reaction and you’re sure to find a plethora of new blog ideas!
