Whether you fill up up your social media calendar months in advance or mail content on the wing, you lot will need to have a steady source of content to mail service on social media.

Consequent content is a claiming for many social media marketers. Alongside an increase in the number of businesses on social media, we see a massive increase in the quality of content by brands.

Whether you create it yourself or share information technology from another source, your audience expects visually compelling and original content. Information technology shouldn't go overboard attempting to sell a product or service.

Creating Social Media Content Vs. Finding It

Should your content marketing efforts focus on creating original content, or tin yous mix in curated content?

Original content tin can be more than fourth dimension-consuming and expensive, and it's not always readily available, particularly for smaller businesses that have a express budget or are but getting started.

If y'all but have so much original material to share with your audience, finding other content online, weeding out the good from the bad, and curating it for your audience is entirely adequate. Many successful content sites implement content curation equally a cadre strategy.

Finding adept content to share with your audition makes you an authority in your niche if you do it consistently and stick to interesting and high-quality pieces.

How to Find Content Ideas for Social Media

But where practice you find content for social media? The sources on this list will allow you to find a consistent source of content to share on social media and inspire you to create original content.

ane. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo

Content Tool for Social Media – Buzzsumo

Some say Buzzsumo is a social media marketer'due south best friend, and when it comes to looking for data to share with your audition, that's true. Buzzsumo allows you to find the near popular social media content, and you can search for it past categories like engagement, keywords, and even the type of content.

Buzzsumo is also a peachy way to detect influencers relevant to your industry, which can be some other fantastic source for content.

2. Twitter Explore

Content Tool for Social Media – Twitter Explore

While many people may not call up of Twitter equally a search engine, a glance through the results for a particular keyword or hashtag can bring you everything from news to relevant memes related to your niche.

Y'all tin can also create a list of your favorite content providers and practise a quick survey of them each twenty-four hour period. Information technology's a great place to look when you lot're in a hurry and demand quick content to share.

iii. Facebook Fan Pages

Content Tool for Social Media – Facebook Fan Pages

There is a Facebook Fan Folio for practically everything these days, and many of them provide excellent share-worthy content. Await for pages that chronicle to your niche, or pay attention to the content leaders in your industry are sharing. One of the all-time things nearly using Facebook Fan Pages is that yous can sign up to receive notifications every time the pages relevant to you brand a post.

4. Pinterest Search

Content Tool for Social Media – Pinterest Search

Pinterest is not but a hotbed for impossible-to-replicate recipes, though those do make great content depending on your niche.

You'll find a petty scrap of everything on this social media site, from photos and memes to how-tos and instructional blog posts. Merely apply the search bar and become lost in visual content. Follow your favorites to keep your feed updated with good stuff to share with your audience.

5. YouTube

Content Tool for Social Media – Youtube

If you lot aren't searching YouTube for content, yous should start. Once you've watched a few videos in a particular category, the site begins to bespeak you in the management of similar ones, and it should provide you with weeks worth of content.

vi. Email Newsletters

Content Tool for Social Media – Email Newsletter

Prototype source

Electronic mail newsletters are a peachy way to find the most trending topics in your niche. Email newsletters ofttimes include weekly or monthly curated lists of interesting material.

Sign up for some that relate to your niche or simply provide interesting or attractive material to share. Someone else has already gone to the trouble of choosing pinnacle-quality pieces, which can relieve you a little time.

seven. Tumblr

Content Tool for Social Media – Tumblr

Packed full of quality visuals and links to interesting articles and other media, Tumblr is a content curator's dream — specially if you're focused on trending topics that entreatment to a younger audience, like mode and travel.

8. Feedly

Content Tool for Social Media – Feedly

The news aggregator app, Feedly, is not just a neat place to find textile but too a great identify to keep it organized. Just search for your keywords, find some sites y'all like, and add them to your account for regular updates.

You tin also collect your favorite blogs in your niche and keep a pulse on your industry – information technology's a fantastic way to detect content to share on your social media accounts. The Feedly app is bachelor for iOS and Android, making it easy to discover content on the become.

ix. Your Contest's Social Media Sites

Check out what your competition or the bigger companies within your category are posting. While yous don't want to copy everything they exercise, information technology tin provide you with some inspiration and ship you in the right direction when you've just started seeking good content.

10. Scoop.It

Content Tool for Social Media – Scoop.information technology

The primary reason people use Scoop.It is to find neat content to share, so it's important to exist sure you accept these handy tools in your social media marketing kit.

You sign up for an business relationship and follow the topics and other accounts that fit the clarification of what y'all're looking for. Your feed is then presented to you in an attractive array of pictures and articles, and you can share the things you similar to almost all of your social media accounts with just the click of a button.

eleven. Reddit

Content Tool for Social Media – Reddit

If you've ever visited Reddit, you know it's a massive website with millions of users submitting photos, discussions, links, videos, text, and other digital content types. Learning how to navigate the subreddits — at least 1 for practically every topic — can be overwhelming, but once you lot figure information technology out, you'll hit the content jackpot.

12. Pocket

Content Tool for Social Media – Pocket

Yous may or may not exist familiar with Pocket (it used to be called Read It Afterwards), but information technology'southward time to innovate yourself if you're not. The app allows you lot to save links and articles you would similar to read later, which is nifty if you lot're skimming all of the other sources mentioned on the list.

You lot'll even receive updates on trending content like to your saves. Best of all, Pocket will point you toward timely content that keeps upwardly with pop civilization and current events.

thirteen. Google Alerts

Content Tool for Social Media – Google Alerts

If y'all don't desire to search for your content, endeavor having the content delivered to your inbox with Google Alerts. Simply go to the site, sign up for alerts based on keywords, phrases, and topics you lot're interested in, and you'll receive emails when someone posts near those topics online.

You tin let Google to sort through it and but bring y'all the high-quality stuff or have them send you everything. You can also sign up to receive emails as they happen or a daily digest.

14. Bloglovin

Content Tool for Social Media – Bloglovin

If you enjoy sharing content from your favorite blogs, sign up for a Bloglovin account. The platform helps you organize your favorites and find more blogs in item categories, like DIY, mode, beauty, lifestyle, entertainment, and habitation decor. You can also sign up to receive emails when your favorite blogs are updated.

xv. Slideshare

Content Tool for Social Media – Slideshare

Some other excellent place for finding good visual content is Slideshare. All of the material here is high-quality, and the site will make recommendations for y'all based on what'southward trending.

How to Detect Content Ideas for Social Media Without Using Tools

But finding high-quality curated content doesn't have to hateful signing up for a bunch of tools or trawling through dozens of social media accounts.

There are plenty of viable content curation strategies that don't involve a single tool. Here are some of our favorites:

16. Share User-Generated Content

Your audience likely already loves user-generated content (UGC), with four-fifths of consumers saying information technology highly influences their purchasing decisions.

In contrast, but ane in 8 feel the same mode about brand-created content. So it'south definitely in your all-time interests to contain UGC into your content curation plans.

User-generated content comes in many shapes and sizes. Popular formats include:

  • Reviews and testimonials
  • User-written web log posts
  • Video content
  • Social media posts
  • Q&A sessions

GoPro is a big believer in the ability of user-generated content. Spend 30 seconds scrolling its Instagram wall, and you'll come across numerous UGC examples. Near of its content comes from its users rather than its marketing team.

How does information technology become so much fantastic content from its audience?

It doesn't hurt that GoPro designed its product to capture extreme, exciting, out-of-the-ordinary imagery and video. Sharing that footage gives GoPro users a fantastic opportunity to evidence off their latest adventures.

And it too doesn't hurt that GoPro has a considerable post-obit (xix meg+ on Instagram alone). If you're an aspiring creator, getting your content shared by a brand like GoPro is a big bargain.

Only despite all those advantages, GoPro nevertheless realizes its audience might need a little nudge to submit high-quality UGC, which is why information technology runs regular incentives and competitions.

If you're struggling to generate a consistent stream of quality UGC (or any), consider doing the same. Make your audience'south life easier by giving them clear instructions for what you're looking for, including an engaging theme. Offering a prize worth winning — whether that'south a free product, a cash reward, a souvenir voucher, or a unique experience.

17. Raid Your Web log

Okay, so repurposing your ain content doesn't technically count as "curating" content, simply it's similar enough that we decided to mention it here.

Recollect about it. Unless you've only just started your blogging journey, there's a good chance you accept a sizable library of content covering a wide range of top-level subjects. For instance, here at SMSS, our blog search brings up nearly 240 results for the term "Facebook."

That means yous've got a ton of ammo for creating something fresh to share on social.

Have you created custom images for previous blog posts? Use them equally the basis for new epitome posts. Interviewed a idea leader in your niche last yr? Pull out a primal quote and share it with your audition again — chances are many of them missed it the start fourth dimension around. Have yous published an evergreen blog that'southward still relevant? Feel free to reshare it whenever you've got a lull in your social schedule.

18. Leverage Other Companies' Content

Your industry likely has a scattering of big companies that fix the agenda.

For case, in social media, we have the likes of Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter. If those folks were doing something new, nosotros'd desire to know about it, and and then would our audition. So we might consume i of their latest blog posts (or videos, investor reports, or patent filings) and pick out the key takeaways, so you don't accept to.

That way, we get a fantastic basis for a social post, and you get a agglomeration of useful, interesting information without having to dig through a 20-page pdf.

SEO skillful Bill Slawski has used this tactic with excellent results. He routinely dives into Google's latest patents to find out what the search engine giant is up to side by side, unsurprisingly of nifty interest to his audition.

19. Share Survey Results

It'southward hard to overestimate the value of original surveys (that is, surveys carried out or commissioned by your system) when curating content.

Yous ask several questions, share them with your audience, and end upwardly with a substantial dataset that can be the footing for multiple social media posts.

The best thing is, if your survey is based on an evergreen topic, yous can keep sharing the results months (or even years) down the line because there are and then many ways to cut and slice the information to produce new insights.

For years, Orbit Media has been running a blogging survey that digs into stuff similar the average word count of a web log post and the length of time bloggers spend on a typical mail service.

They carried out their nearly recent survey in September 2021, but the results are just as relevant now. Orbit is still sharing some of the juiciest tidbits on social media more than half a year later the results were beginning published:

While it's always overnice to accept new data, there's no reason why those results won't still exist helpful — and shareable — in some other yr.

20. Tap Into Large Datasets

Like the survey idea, but don't have the resources to run your own?

There are tons of other massive datasets available to you. While they're publicly available, there'south and then much information that it's possible to develop engaging, unique insights and takes. That potentially makes them an extremely valuable part of your content curation strategy.

So what do these massive datasets look like? Where can you find them?

There are tons of examples — far as well many to list here. Only here are a few of our favorite sources:

  • US Bureau of Labor Statistics: The go-to source for data on employment, aggrandizement, wages, etc.
  • Glassdoor: Offers insights into what it'south similar to work for unlike organizations (and how much they pay).
  • Numbeo: Compares the cost of living in more than 10,500 cities worldwide.
  • US Census Bureau: Data on businesses, demographics, health, housing, and more.
  • National Highway Traffic Prophylactic Administration: A wealth of data on traffic crashes across the US, segmented in various ways, including location, type of vehicle, and type of incident.

These Sources Are Simply the Beginning

These are just a few of the dandy places to find content to share on social media.

There are thousands more out there simply waiting to exist discovered.

Sometimes, all you have to do is recollect outside the box when searching for content that people will enjoy, engage, and share themselves. What's the most unique place yous've ever relied on for social media content?

Desire to dominate social media strategy within your system? Register today for our adjacent superlative in your area and/or our next virtual upshot: Social Media Strategies Summit!

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