Finding Ideas for Posting on Social

Welcome to a brand new month, a brand new theme, and a brand new post. This month we are talking all about sales and marketing.  The reason that I am making this the theme for June is that so many of you have so many questions about sales and marketing. Today I will be sharing about finding ideas for posting on social.

I get asked all the time how I keep coming up with ideas for things to post. So, I am going to tell you how I come up with ideas. And I'm also going to talk about some inspiration. I'll give you three tips for finding ideas, and seven places to find inspiration.

What you need to start finding ideas for posting on social

Serve your ideal customer

The first thing that you need to know to be able to post anything on social, and get any sort of traction is you have to serve your ideal customers. Now I know you guys are so tired of talking about the ideal customer. But if you do not have an ideal customer, how are you going to know what to post?

It is hard to come up with something to post when you don't know who you're talking to. Here's the thing though, your ideal customer doesn't have to be your ideal customer forever. It just has to be your ideal customer for right now.

My first ideal customer was a male middle-aged insurance salesman. Now my ideal customer is a female in her late thirties to early forties, mom, online business owner. A completely different ideal customer.  So it is okay if you change your ideal customer. Nothing about your business has to be permanent. And one of the amazing things about being a small business owner is that you can pivot.

Pick an ideal customer for right now

I want you to pick an ideal customer for right now. And then give it a month, and if it doesn't work, or you don't like it, you can change it. Remember, not every customer's going to be your ideal customer either. I would say at this point, probably about 30% of my clients are not my ideal customer. So keep that in mind as well.

Know your ideal customer’s interest, pain points, and objections

The second thing you need to know once you know who your ideal customer is you know their interests, their pain points, and their objections to purchasing your product or service. In their interests:

• What do they like to do?
• Where do they like to hang out?
• Are they into outdoor sports?
• Do they like decorating the homes?

Their interests do not have to be things that are related to what you sell. Especially if you're a bookkeeper, your clients are not interested in bookkeeping. Find out what else they are interested in. Maybe they are interested in trying to be a better business owner while being a good mom.

Find your customer's pain points and objections 

Find out their pain points. What are the things that they wish you would make go away? A lot of bookkeeping clients just want to make their bookkeeping go away. They understand that they have to do it.  But they think that QuickBooks is too hard. They think that it will not get easier and that they can't afford you.

That is also one of their objections. They think that they can't afford bookkeeping services, or they can't afford a virtual assistant or whatever service you're providing.

One of the things we talked about in Bookkeeper Training School on the live call a couple of weeks ago, is the fact that a lot of women believe that they have to do it on their own. They have to do all the things. And they don't understand that most successful businesses have a team of people behind them.

I have a team of people behind me that nobody sees. But I can't run this business without them. And so I think that's one of the things we have to address.

Once you know your ideal client’s interests, pain points, and objections, you can start posting about those things.

In finding ideas for posting on social you have to curate your social media

One of the things that I often talk about in Bookkeeper Training School is that you have to curate your social media. If you're curating, you're creating a feed or a magazine for the people who view your social.

• What are articles are going to be interesting to your ideal customer?
• Are there any quotes that will resonate with them?
• How about funny memes, questions, surveys.
• What are things that are going to be interesting for them?

And that's why knowing your ideal customer is so, so important.

Where can you find inspirations to help in finding ideas for posting on social 

Where do you get inspiration? If you know your ideal customer, and their interests, pain points, and objections, you want to post about those things. But where do you find that?

Follow other pages  

First of all, I follow a tremendous number of other pages just to see the types of things they're posting. And these pages don't have to be for people that are in your field. It can also be people who have the same ideal customer. So if you know who your ideal customer is, and you know what they like to follow, follow other brands that are in those interests categories. Because that will often help you come up with interesting things.

Follow the leaders in your field 

Also, make sure that you're following leaders in your field. So for example, if you're a QuickBooks pro advisor, make sure you follow QuickBooks and not just the QuickBooks general software page, but there's also information for small businesses that you've can follow. Sometimes there are multiple pages for a brand.

For example, American Express has a small business initiative. You can also follow the SBA, local chambers of commerce, or the  US Chamber of Commerce to see what they're posting about.

Not all content that you post has to be original to you 

Remember that not all of the content you post on social has to be original to you. A lot of the things you post are going to be articles, where you will share and talk a little bit about it. Sometimes you're just going to be looking for statistics that you can provide to your audience and talk about those a little bit. There's just so much out there.

And I think the problem with social as that you believe that everything that you post has to be your original idea. And I hate to tell you, but there aren't a lot of original ideas left out there. So it's really important for you to be a curator.

Where I find inspiration to post on social

1. Following other people in my field and people who have the same idea of customer and then authorities in my fields as well.
2. Read books, and highlight things I can use as quotes. I'll make quote cards out to that to post.
3. Attend free webinars. I still to this day attend a lot of free training, and a lot of paid training, just to get ideas from people and see what people are talking about.
4. Listen to podcasts. I listen to a ton of podcasts. Very often I will get quotes out of podcasts, and I'll to the show notes for that podcast after I've listened to it. And a lot of times they'll pull out the quotes for you.
5. New sites and blogs. If you know who your ideal customer is, you can follow the blogger that might be interesting to them. You can follow new sites that might be interesting to them.  If you're in the bookkeeping field or the tax fields, you can follow the IRS's small business newsletter or small business publications.
6. Use Google and search for a quote. You can look for small business quotes about team building or hiring help to help with the objection that a lot of women believe that they need to do everything on their own. So you would be looking for quotes on how you can't do this alone, and how important team and help are.
7. Look at quotes as you're walking through Home Goods,  Joanne's Fabrics, or other similar stores. They have all those inspirational little quotes on things. I walk around the store and I'll take pictures of them because they're awesome. And then what I do is turn them into quote cards.

When you find ideas for what to post on social you can create quote cards from many places.  You can use Canva or Stencil to do this.

Now that you are finding ideas to post on social have fun

Don't think that everything you post has to be related to what you do.  That just not fun or exciting, and that will not keep people engaged with your page.

So some of the things you post have to be:

• Fun
• Informational, you know, some of them
• Controversial, geared to get people to take action.
• And then some of them are going to be like, "Hey guys, I have three openings this month for new clients. Would you like to be one of those new clients? This is how you contact me."

Keep people engaged when finding ideas to post on social

You have to keep people engaged. To be able to do that you have to keep posted. Since you know your ideal customer, their interests, pain points, and their objections, you're going to design posts to engage them on those three things.

Inspiration is all around you. It is in your email box, in the books that you read, the podcasts that you listen to, the webinars that you attend, the new sites and blogs you're reading. Even in Home Goods, you can find inspiration.  

Don't let this be harder than it needs to be. But if you open your perspective, and realize that not everything has to be about the thing that you do then that just opens a world of possibilities and great things for you to talk about. And please make social fun.

For many of you, it's a drudgery, because you're not enjoying the process of finding stuff.  So instead, think that you get to read books because it's content for social. You get to look at news sites and fun blogs because it's content for social or your podcasts. That will help make it more fun to do these things.

I hope that you will find joy in curating content to put on your page.